


Open For All: Harley's Playlist

by JointExisting



Series: The Stories that Make Us: Open For All [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (not by the cast tho), Blood and Torture, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Harley Keener Needs a Hug, Harley Keener-centric, Heavy Angst, Hurt Harley Keener, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Non-Consensual Touching, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Physical Abuse, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JointExisting/pseuds/JointExisting
Summary: Even though he knew in his heart of hearts he wasn’t Tony’s son, the few hours Harley spent in the lab as FRIDAY verified the test results were spent in almost total silence as he thought on what it would feel like for it to be true. How amazing it would be to know his dad hadn’t walked out on him, but had come in from the cold all those years ago.//This is part of my ongoingThe Stories that Make Us: Open For Allseries and cannot be read independently. I recommend, to understand the majority of this fic and to avoid spoilers, you to have read up to and includingchapter 8of the originalOpen For All.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Steve Rogers, Harley Keener & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: The Stories that Make Us: Open For All [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704277
Comments: 64
Kudos: 207





	1. Karma's Gonna Come Collect Your Debt

**Author's Note:**

> //Chapter title is from _Wolf in Sheep's Clothing_ , by Set It Off.
> 
> I promised you guys a special ! An' here 'ya have it. You wanted to know what's up with Harley? You might regret asking for that.
> 
> **Please heed the tags**. There is no fluff here: This is dark.  
> This fic does have more chapters (I THINK two more), and will be updated at the appropriate time.
> 
> Once again, please note this is part of my ongoing series and cannot be read independently: To understand the majority of this fic and to avoid spoilers, I recommend you to have read up to and including chapter 8 of the original [Open For All](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247166/chapters/55664725).  
> -J

Harley Keener was a normal kid from Rosehill, Tennessee.

His early life had been marked by five significant events in a set order: his mother’s drinking and drug problem, and subsequently Harley himself being born an addict; his dad going for scratches and – _obviously_ – winning, ‘cause he never came back; getting clean; finding Tony Stark and his Iron Man suit in his shed; and Roy Courtland beating him up for his lunch money for four years straight until Harley broke his eye socket.

No one bothered him after that, thankfully; he really wasn’t a fan of bullies, but if they came at him he didn’t have a choice but to strike now. If he was going to keep his commitment to Tony Stark, he had to put his grades first and get educated, unlock his college fund and leave everyone wondering how the Hell he did it.

So, yeah, he hadn’t lived all that interesting a life before Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark dragged himself into it. Harley didn’t often recall the event of first meeting Tony; the memories might be kind, and the aftermath would remain the best freakin’ Christmas ever, but Harley Keener wasn’t the kind of guy to dwell on the past. He’d learnt quickly in the great wilds of Tennessee it wasn’t a way to survive.

Neither was being gagged, blindfolded and tied up in the back of a van, getting pistol-whipped every time he made even the slightest muffled complaint about his current situation.

Goddammit the last week had been _hard_ , and this? Well, this was just the icing on the fucking cake.

How the Hell had his life – which, as you can see, started out great and just got fantastic after his eleventh birthday – gotten to this?

+ **New York, Avengers Tower**. Harley: 13yrs.

“Hey, kid!”

“Hey, Mr. Stark! Thanks for letting me come to your lab—Wow, New York’s amazing...”

“No problemo, kid. Wanna work on that potato gun? We’ll get sandwiches after. I know a great place in Queens.”

+ **Phone call**. Harley: 14yrs.

“ _Hey, kid._.”

“Mr. Stark!—sorry, I mean _Tony_. Sorry for calling you, I just wanted to let you know I got my GPA up – to 4.6.”

“ _Well, lordy! That’s good, Harley. Have any time this weekend? I’ll buy you, your mom and your sister a ticket up to New York and we’ll work on something in the lab if you want while they see the sights_.”

“Oh, that sounds amazing! Yeah, we got time! I actually had this great idea I wanted to run by you...”

+ **Upstate New York, Avengers Compound**. Harley: 15yrs.

“Kid. Harley. So, how’re you feeling about MIT? Careful with that; it’s flammable.”

“I can’t wait, Tony. My mom’s really proud of me; I’m gonna be able to make her life so much better – and Lindsey’s, too.”

“Lindsey, that’s... your sister. Is she still upset about her watch?”

“Haha. A college fund would probably see the memory erased—Uh, wait, what the Hell is this stuff?”

“It’s Peter’s—the idiot used to make it in his classroom, but I’ve got him making it here now; less chance of anything going wrong. God, he’s accident prone. Hey, d’you pick up that tuna sandwich from Queens on the way through?”

“... Who’s Peter?”

“Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting to introduce you kids. FRIDAY, put a date in the diary—thanks, girl.”

+ **Upstate New York, Avengers Compound**. Harley: 15/16yrs. Peter: 15/16yrs.

Peter Parker was just about the spitting image of Tony Stark – his quirks, the way he walked, his posture; it was... scarily similar. Almost familial. Harley stared at him, mouth agape, as Peter bounced with the combined energy of a toddler and a terrier wrapped up in the neatest damn package Harley had ever seen.

He, Peter, stuck out a hand without a single bruise, burn or nick on it. “Hi!” he said, his voice drenched in the same snarky intelligence as Tony’s, and topped off with that sort of humanity that could be either kind or cruel depending on which end of the sword was pointed at you. “So, you’re Harley? Mr. Stark’s told me all about you.”

“Uh, yeah – that’s me. I’m Harley Keener.” Harley held out a receptive hand, flinching when the other boy took it in a bone-crushing hold.

Peter tipped his head to the side, his smile dazzling. “Peter Parker.”

+ **Upstate New York, Avengers Compound**. _Later that day_.

“Hey, kid – did you pick up the sandwiches?”

Harley looked up immediately, his breath catching, staring across at where Tony was searching through his tools for the right spanner, tutting for it to come to him in habit. “You didn’t mention anything about sandwiches?” Harley replied, mind reeling—when had they had this conversation? He couldn’t remember it; couldn’t even think where the nearest sandwich vendor could be in this part of the state.

Tony looked up and over, giving a whistle. “Oh, Harley – sorry. I meant Peter—Hey, Pete; did you pick up the sandwiches before Happy brought you up here? From Delmar?”

“I did!” Peter hummed, as he handed Tony the right spanner. “I put them in the kitchen, Mr. Stark—you didn’t tell me what you wanted, though, so I got you pastrami.”

“He usually has tuna,” Harley chimed in, looking up from the engine he was tinkering with.

“Eh, I’ve been going off tuna for a while now, actually,” Tony replied, reaching out to ruffle up Peter’s curls. “Pastrami sounds good. Thanks, Pete.”

Peter smiled.

+

Later, as Harley walked to the guest bedroom in the Compound after saying goodnight, he reflected on the day. He came to the conclusion of it as he slid under the covers and flicked off the light, leaving him in the black-out dark for what felt like the first time since he’d woken up:

Peter Parker had a smile brighter than the sun.

And it burnt Harley every time he looked at it.

+ **MIT Campus**. Harley: 17yrs.

When the Snap happened, Harley was in his room at MIT getting drunk off cheap cider.

When the Blip happened, Harley was still in his room at MIT, but now he had a hangover. The windows had been boarded up and his phone was dead. It took two days for anyone to hear his screams for help.

It took two hours to load his phone, an hour on the phone to his mother to hear what had happened in the intervening five years he’d been dusted, and a further three days before Tony called him. It was five before Peter did.

+

“Harley! I’m really sorry I didn’t call before!” Peter babbled into the receiver as soon as Harley answered and put the phone to his ear. “You see I was in space and then this wizard – Doctor Strange – he was all like: ‘it’s been five years; they need us’ and then we were going through this portal thing and we were at the Compound—except the Compound was absolutely totalled and then this giant grape guy—Thanos—he was all like: ‘I am inevitable’ but then Captain America and Thor – Thor was really, uh, he’s—he’s put on weight—and Mr. Stark were there and, like, fighting him! And then Captain America had Thor’s hammer and then _I_ was like, well, I shot a web at the flying hammer and—did I mention I had the infinity gauntlet? Oh, and then there was this _Pegasus_ , you know, like those winged horses from _My Little Pony_ -”

“Peter, hang on,” Harley interrupted, standing up from his cot in one of the MIT’s halls being used for emergency accommodation and leaving to find some privacy. “Back up. You shot a web? What?”

A beat of silence happened, and then Peter said, “Oh, did I never tell you? I’m Spider-Man.”

+

 _Life after the Blip_ was a great movie. Harley had a small cameo.

He was the guy in the background of Tony’s interview in the Stark Industries reception, about midway through, crying into his hands as the doctor on the other end of the phone told him Mom’s cancer was terminal.

+

Everyone had changed; some more subtly than others. The first time Harley went for dinner with Tony, Pepper, Peter and the Avengers was the night after the new Accords were ratified. It was meant to be a celebration of life and the continuation of it.

The rigid atmosphere made it feel more like a funeral. Steve and Tony, who were making it very obvious indeed there might have been a ‘difference of opinion’, did not look at each other once during the night.

+

Harley and Peter had barely seen each other apart from brief exchanges in the hallway between Harley’s lab time and Peter’s ‘internship’.

So a week later, Harley arranged to meet Peter for coffee before he was due to return to MIT. It was a nice place, not very crowded, and the beverages weren’t half bad. He ordered himself a black coffee and sat in the window with an eye on the street. When Peter appeared, he looked worse than he had that night at dinner.

“What’s wrong?” Harley asked immediately as Peter practically fell into the chair across from him. “Is everyone OK? Is... Is everyone taking the Blip OK?”

Two months wasn’t a long time to get over half the population rising from the wayward dead, after all.

Harley had lost sixteen classmates to suicide, and a further eight had almost gone with an overdose. What a brave new world it was.

“Yeah, sure,” Peter replied, sitting up only to slump forwards on to the table. “I’m... just having a bad time with... this guy in my class...”

Harley raised his cup to take a gulp, staring at Peter over the rim. “Is he bullying you?” he asked carefully, flicking his eyes across to the barista. Taking in a long breath, Harley looked at Peter and, in that moment, decided to put as much of his personal feelings and leanings behind him; he’d been here, he knew the crushing feelings which came with being bullied. Peter didn’t deserve that; he helped save the universe for God’s sake. “Wanna tell me about him?”

Peter swallowed. “It-it’s not just him...” He crowded himself, nestling his head and shoulders into his arms.

Inhaling, Harley leant across the table and placed a hand carefully on Peter’s shoulder—like he’d seen Tony do when everything got a bit much or when Peter got overhyped and needed to calm down. Even though he flinched under Harley’s hold, the tension fled quickly from Peter’s bunched-up muscles. “Lemme get you a coffee and we’ll chat about it, all right?” Harley said, ducking his head to send Peter a comforting smile.

“Uh—OK. OK. Yes. Thanks, Harley.”

“No problemo,” Harley replied, removing his contact and standing up. He stretched one leg, throwing a glance over his shoulder, “No peppermint, right?”

A blush splashed over Peter’s white skin and he gave a gentle chuckle. “No peppermint.”

+

In Harley’s first week back at MIT, Peter texted him almost nonstop; their conversations were long and winding and rambled on for much too long about pointless things. But then, suddenly, Peter stopped responding. Radio silence. Harley waited a few days, a week, another after that, thinking nothing of it (he was busy; Peter was, too, probably), until he got a phone call from Tony at stupid o’clock. Thankfully, he’d been awake studying and aware enough that when AC/DC started screaming from his phone he very nearly almost didn’t jump.

“Hey, Tony.” Slightly winded from the unexpected scare, Harley sat back in his chair and pulled his left leg across his right, biting into an apple he’d had on the desk for nearly a week.

“Harley.” Tony hiccupped, his breaths on the edge of unsteady.

Harley immediately sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“I-” Tony started. “It-it’s Peter.”

Cold dread pooled in Harley’s stomach and he swore his heart stopped beating. “What’s... wrong with Peter? Is-is he OK?” He got up from his chair and grabbed his sweater, already starting the search for his backpack.

A long pause came from the other side of the phone, and Harley paused to listen to how Tony was breathing—breathing like he had that night. The teenager was struck by the similarity as he said, “Are you having a panic attack? Tony? Breathe, OK? Are you-”

“He’s my son,” Tony interrupted with an inward gasp, and there was a slap of skin on skin as if he’d hit his forehead with the back of his hand. “Peter’s my biological son.”

+ **New York, the Tower**.

It was obvious when you were told it: Peter Parker was Tony Stark’s son? Of course he was.

What wasn’t so obvious and, actually, was quite strange was Tony’s insistence of a DNA test between himself and Harley—because it was obvious Harley Keener was not Tony Stark’s son. There were resemblances, of course there were; you didn’t spend years idolising someone and spending so much time with them without adopting mannerisms—and Harley wasn’t shy, either; he never had been. It was realistic to say his personality was a lesser of Tony’s.

Even though he knew in his heart of hearts he wasn’t Tony’s son, the few hours Harley spent in the lab as FRIDAY verified the test results were spent in almost total silence as he thought on what it would feel like for it to be true. How amazing it would be to know his dad hadn’t walked out on him, but had come in from the cold all those years ago.

He’d only just begun entertaining the thoughts when FRIDAY announced it was a negative match. Harley took small comfort in seeing both Tony and Peter weren’t sure how to react to the result either. The awkwardness disbursed over the next day or so, until Harley put his foot in it: “So, how does it work with your aunt?” he asked Peter, “Are she and Tony co-parenting?”

Peter burst into tears and ran to his room.

Harley got a telling off from Tony, but he defended himself—no one had exactly _told him_ May Parker had died in the last few weeks. Sheepishly, Tony accepted that and then left to tend to his son.

His son. Peter Parker (Stark? No one told him).

Harley cut short his stay and left for MIT the next day, feeling embarrassed and self-conscious by how Peter was so suddenly devoid of himself. That was Harley’s fault. He deserved Tony’s brush-off the next day.

He might have even deserved the snub the day after that.

But he didn’t think he deserved the silent treatment for the next three weeks.

+Harley: 18yrs.

“Uh—hey, Harley. What’s up? Little busy this end right now.”

“Tony, hi. Sorry – I just had this really quick question—I’ve got this old engine from a Bentley and I was hoping-”

“—Goddammit, Cap, can you shut the Hell up? I’m trying to talk Peter through this, _and_ I’ve got Harley on the phone—Sorry, Harley, Capsicle’s being an old man. Repeat that, will ya?”

Harley fidgeted with the valve of the engine. “I was just wondering—if I wanted to convert-”

“—Peter! Stop! Not—You’ll blow up the whole place—where the Hell is Bruce? Hey, stop snicker—“ A crash came from Tony’s side of the phone. “Goddammit—Harley, can this wait? Do you not have someone there who can explain it? I’m just a little busy.”

“Oh, well, it’s just that-” Harley tried.

“Harley, I’ll give you a call tonight, OK? There’s about twenty things in this room right now which are about to explode and—Pete! Can you wait one goddamn minute? Sorry, kid.”

Harley opened his mouth to reply, but Tony had already stopped the call. He pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned before setting it, screen down, on the table beside him. On the back, _STARK INDUSTRIES_ stared blatantly at him.

To Tony’s credit, he did call back and answer Harley’s question that evening.

+

The next time Harley rang, a few days later, to say the conversion had been a success; it wasn’t Tony who answered his mobile.

It was Steve Rogers. When the Captain’s voice greeted him cheerily, Harley immediately checked he’d dialled the right number before he lamely realised he didn’t actually have Steve Rogers’s number. “Uh, hi? Is... Is Tony OK?” asked Harley immediately.

“He’s fine,” said Steve—something crowed in the background, giving away the location of being outside. “We’re at an Accords-sanctioned picnic – a charity thing—Uh, sorry, if you can hear arguing that’s just Sam and Bucky.”

“Oh.” Harley shifted in his chair, casting a glance down at his paper. “I was just, uh—is Tony not available?”

“Oh, no, he’s here—he’s with _Spider-Man_ right now, though. He left his phone at the table, so I thought I’d answer because it’s been a while since we chatted. Do you want me to take a message?”

Something started up in the background and Harley’s sharp hearing caught the first strings of _Memories_ by _Maroon 5_. How oddly appropriate. “Uh... No. That’s fine. I can call back—I just wanted to tell him the engine conversion was successful.”

There was a moment of shuffling, a second or two of bulky silence, and then Steve said, “That sounds cool, Harley. Wanna tell me about it? I don’t get a lot of the tech side, but en engine doesn’t sound too complicated to me.”

“Oh, I don’t wanna bore you,” said Harley, though he had his hand on the paperwork, about to turn the page.

“Bore me? You couldn’t, son,” Steve laughed.

Something fluttered happily in Harley’s heart. He took a few minutes to give an outline of the project, and then all of a sudden Steve rang off. Harley stared at his phone, unsure, and then it lit up with an unknown number. He pressed accept. “Uh—Steve?—Did you get cut off, or...?”

“Tony came looking for his phone,” Steve replied casually, and Harley could imagine him shrugging it off. “He needed it for some PR photos or something—but I wanna hear more about this engine – so you changed out a cartridge, or...?”

Harley chatted to Steve – to Captain America – for another twenty minutes. When they rang off – Harley had a class he should get to – he saved the number but didn’t expect to hear from Steve again—maybe in an emergency; maybe if Tony was hurt.

He definitely didn’t expect to have Steve call him most evenings just to find out how school was going, but life works like that sometimes.

+

Harley got the phone call – the one he’d been dreading – at six-thirty on a Wednesday morning. He high-tailed it down to Tennessee on the next train and got there in time to say goodbye.

She was buried on Friday.

Immediately afterwards, Lindsey was taken into care for the foreseeable future. When Harley asked, they said it was unlikely she’d even be fostered, so would likely live in a home with other kids her age for the next five or so years. She was almost _excited_.

He called Tony and told him everything, got given soft reassurance in the longest and most uninterrupted conversation with the man he’d had in months: the family home was secured, Lindsey’s college was secured, Harley’s future was secured. Then Tony had to ring off and go to a meeting. “Stay safe, Harls.”  
After sitting in the house by himself for a while, Harley called Steve and cried.

“Can you come to New York for a while, you think?” asked the Captain.

“I-I got school.”

Steve breathed into the receiver. “I know, Harley, but I think you should be around family right now. Just... think about it, OK?”

Harley took a long walk before going back to MIT only to find his exams had been pushed back a week. His bags were already packed anyway—maybe some time in New York would do him good?

+ **Present: Tuesday**.

“ _How’s your mother?_ ”

Harley held it together – somehow. He swapped a look with Tony and then took the focus off of himself immediately, centred his attention on something else entirely—something he could think of, something easy to chat about, something he thought would matter to all of them.

He fucked up: “MIT’s great. Intense, though. I’m sure it’ll be even better when you’re there!”

Sure, it was an assumption—but Tony had been adamant Harley went to MIT, so it should have been a safe bet he would be looking to send Peter there, too. Harley was actually more surprised Peter wasn’t already enrolled; he was definitely smart enough, and capable.

He hadn’t expected Peter to stiffen up, or for Tony to spook and drop his spoon. Harley instantly knew he’d said wrong, his stomach churning, but it wasn’t like he could take it back. He was in it now—had Peter not gotten in? Was he-

“We’re not thinking of college this year, are we Pete?” said Tony, wandering over to place down a milky coffee in front of his son. His hand folded over and squeezed Peter’s shoulder. Something silent passed between them.

Harley looked from Peter to Tony, and then let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding in. He leant back into his chair, trying to break the tension and said something stupid again—something like he should stop telling people there would be another Stark in MIT in the fall (he hadn’t told anyone that; only one of his teachers even knew about Harley and Tony’s relationship). The next thing he knew Peter was fumbling and getting up from his chair – Harley had never seen him so nervous – and he was walking away, quickstepping back to his room—“Peter? Where ya goin’?”

He made to get up, but Tony rounded on him. “Harley! What the Hell did you do that for? College is a... sensitive subject for Peter right now!”

“How would I know that?” Harley responded, his lips pursed as he stared up at Tony, saw the dark discomfort settled in his eyes and Harley realised—he was in pain. There was pain there; a lot of it. “Tony-”

“Don’t, Harley – jus-just don’t,” Tony sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “I-”

“Boss. Peter is currently experiencing a panic attack; I think you should go to him,” said FRIDAY, chill alarm present in her Irish accent.

“Oh, God – Peter.” Tony kicked up his heels and rushed away without a second glance back.

Harley sat in the engulfing silence, trying to fathom what just happened—until he couldn’t anymore. He stopped dwelling and got up from his chair, dumping the cold dregs of his coffee down the drain before he reached over to turn off the waffle maker and set the batter to one side. Harley’s eyes flirted with the hot plate, wondered briefly if Tony might come back if he dropped his hand on it and shoved the top down.

Before his thought process could swim any further into dangerous waters, he pivoted on his toe and took a few steps over to the table, hesitated there, looking at the machine from the corner of his eye. Harley snapped himself out of it with a shake of head and left the kitchen, walking quickly down the hallway-

“ _Kid. Kid, you’re safe. You’re not trapped under anything. You’re in the light – in the Tower. You’re here with me – kid. C’mon, buddy, breathe with me – in, n’ out, that’s it. C’mon, Pete, we’re through this. We’re through this—kid_.”

Harley paused and listened, his head tilted down and to the side. He tread carefully up to the light spreading into the hallway from the open door and waited a second – his ear close – as Tony shushed and pleaded for Peter to be OK, to quiet his tears, to come back to him. Something like sadness welled up in Harley and he moved into sight, “Tony-”

“Not now, Harley,” Tony bit out and raised his bloodshot eyes to stare at Harley and his lonesome silhouette.

Harley took a step back at the tone: the pain there was evident, pressured—like a match waiting to be lit.

A wail from Peter took Tony’s strayed attention and he wrapped Peter – strong, resilient Peter Parker – up in a hug. “Can you—can you go and get Bruce, please? Harley?”

“Bruce? Why?”

“I-I need him for...” Tony’s head was working – Harley could see that, even at this angle – the gears were turning, but his eyes and his hands were all over his son, trying hard to keep him calm and secure and safe—and Harley was struck wondering exactly what that was like. “For a doctor’s note,” Tony finished lamely, brushing Peter’s hair off his forehead, blowing a wisp of breath over it. “Shush.”

Harley turned on his heel and glided down the hallway at speed, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “FRI? Where’s Bruce?”

“Avenger Halls, Harley.”

Nodding, Harley used the stairs to drop down the two floors from the penthouse, pausing in the stairwell to ask, “Why am I going down to get him anyway, FRI? Can’t you just ask him?”

She answered immediately. “Boss has forbidden me from announcing when Peter is having a panic attack, although he will sometimes permit me to send someone an automated text summons. It’s part of Protocol 940.”

“Ah, sounds like Tony.” Harley leapt the last few stairs and shoved open the door. “Tony needs you,” he immediately said to the crowded room, searching out Bruce’s hulking shape in the corner, head ducked in a book.

“All of us?” asked Steve, already getting up.

“No. Just Bruce.” Harley gestured at the stairwell. “Tony needs you to... write a doctor’s note.”

Bruce took off his obscenely-spindly glasses and shoved a bookmark between the pages of the light novel he was reading, heaving himself out his giant, comfortable-looking chair. He threw the other Avengers a second-there smile – which they returned, somewhat knowingly – and met Harley at the door. “Jus-just a doctor’s note, right? For Peter, I guess?”

“Think so,” Harley replied. They made it up to the penthouse in record time and Harley gestured down the hallway towards Peter’s room. Bruce thumped down there quickly, muttering something like ‘thanks’.  
Intrigued to hear how Peter was faring, Harley followed slowly behind him, moving at a pacing glide to keep himself nearly soundless over the carpet. He set a hand on the wall as he went, feeling for the moment the texture of it changed; the reinforced wall of Peter’s room had a different feeling on his roughened fingers to the smoothness of the other areas of the penthouse.

“—have Hap pop that over there, with a – doctor’s note.” That was Tony’s voice, and it seemed calmer – frayed, yes – but overall it sounded freer; maybe a little breathy. Harley stuck close to the wall, leaning into it, watching as Bruce rubbed his huge palms together and looked into the room, blocking the entrance entirely. It didn’t sound like Peter was crying anymore, though, and Harley let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding in, raising a hand to place over his heart in relief.

“And you’ll spend the day in the lab with me and Harley-” Harley lifted his head at that, hearing the slightest of hesitation in Tony’s tone—and then, “-Not even Harley, if you want. It can just be us.”

 _Ouch_. Harley dropped his hand and pushed himself off of the wall, pressing his lips into a line as he turned and stalked back to the living area. He grabbed out his laptop along the way and sat himself down on the sofa to get the last of his schoolwork done.

Bruce appeared a minute or so later, taking a seat in the biggest armchair to begin writing a formal doctor’s note. His scribbling ceased suddenly and he cleared his throat, catching Harley’s attention easily—he could feel the intense eyes on him, the troubled stare. “Uh, Harley—Co-could you get me a template off the internet? I’ve never had to write one of these before...”

Harley searched up something quickly and Bruce thanked him. A few minutes later, Tony arrived in the room carrying a folder of homework. He loomed over the sofa a moment, and Harley flicked his eyes up quickly before diverting his stare back to the laptop screen when he noticed the older man’s eyes on his work, but then Tony looked away, stepped to the side and said, “Hey, Bruce—have a look at this, will you? Peter corrected one of the questions.”

Harley watched the exchange with short interest from his side-vision—he’d actually completed everything he needed to (well, almost everything) while in Tennessee; he had a few voluntary bits, and an article he’d promised the student paper, but otherwise there was only one more sheet of exam questions he had to go through—then it was just a matter of doing it again and again and again until he could practically recite everything in his sleep.

Bruce took the sheet from Tony – who glanced Harley’s way with a raised eyebrow, but refocused when Bruce whistled and said, “Wow—I know it’s just a test, Tony, but for Peter to have worked out the right measurement is... It’s something the teacher should have clocked.” He handed it back, brushing a hand over his head. “The kid’s a damn genius.”

“Of course he is,” said Tony, his expression bolstered. He slid one hand into his pocket. “He’s my son, Bruce. Of course he’s a genius.”

Harley slumped forwards – just slightly – and turned his attention back to the worksheet.

+

Harley did work with them in the lab, but he kept his distance. The music was too loud for him to hear their conversation, anyway. He didn’t mind, though: he liked the music. It kept his thoughts straight.

+ **Present: Wednesday**.

Peter went to school on Wednesday. Harley tried to talk to Tony, tried to ask him anything he could think of—just tried to talk, to get something of a positive reaction about anything—anything at all.

They got five minutes in, and a further three spent in silence, and then Tony looked at his watch, blew out a long breath and said, “Oh, sorry, Harley; I promised Pepper I’d take a conference call with Berlin today. Shouldn’t last long, OK? Why don’t you go down and see what R&D is doing? Keep your earpieces in, and I’ll call you up.”

Harley forced a smile and nodded, picking up his bag and popping down to see the scientists and developers—Dr. Hemsworth welcomed him with open arms and a booming laugh.

For three hours, Harley did this and that and waited for Tony to call him up. In the end, he went up to the Avengers’ Hallways and had a coffee with Steve, Clint and Natasha instead.

+ _Later_.

“Hey, Harley. Sorry we never got that lab time, kid—something came up with the Copenhagen branch.”

“It’s all right, Tony.”

“Tell ya what, Harls, we got an hour until Peter gets back: let’s chat a bit, OK? I’m sorry about your mom...”

+ **Present: Thursday**.

Rhodey was one of Harley’s favourite people. He was passionate, but kept everything in check; made sure everyone was involved and there weren’t any loose threads. He had the look of someone who always knew what he was meant to say, but didn’t always say it, and that’s exactly what made him Rhodey.

He’d just been explaining the inner workings of a turbine when Tony interrupted with something between a groan and a whine. Harley only half-listened to the man’s whims, slurping his cereal idly, until Tony said almost offhandedly, “It’s about that stupid field trip. Secretary Rosendale herself will be joining it.”

Harley sputtered and examined, “What?” at the very same time as Peter. He bowed out, as Peter continued speaking and Harley tried to get rid of the taste settling in his mouth, chugging his orange juice with a frown.

“... Before you start thinking anything, platypus, the reason _this_ field trip is important is because it’s Peter’s class.”

“Oh,” Rhodey replied. Harley watched a complicated expression come over the man’s aged face. “But... Why do _you_ need to tour your—well, puttin’ it bluntly, here, Pete—Why do you need to tour what’s practically your own company?”

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but Harley found himself snorting with laughter at the absurdity of it all and cut in, “That’s Peter’s other problem.” He threw a look to Rhodey – who looked interested in Harley’s continuing of the conversation – and Tony – who’d raised a conflicted eyebrow – and finally to Peter who was—well, looking at him with a similar expression to Tony. Huh. Harley clenched his spoon, and then unclenched it to place it carefully in his bowl. “No one believes him about the ‘internship’. Right?” Harley turned to Peter, watching the flicker of his eyes, and carefully Harley reached to give his shoulder a quick squeeze in hopes it would lessen the settled tension between them. He shot him a smile, “Well, you’re gonna have to prove ‘em wrong, right?”

“I guess.” Hesitation was the first thing Harley heard in Peter’s reply, and he faltered a little at it, taking his hand back—what sort of answer was that? What sort of response? Why would Peter not want to prove his internship? Hell, Harley wasn’t even totally sure why he didn’t want the world to know he was a Stark. If that DNA test had come back positive—

 _Whoa. That’s dangerous thinking, Keener_.

Harley rolled his shoulders and sat back in his chair, looking across to see Tony’s eyes had lit up. The rest of the table was talking, and Harley blinked a few times to get himself back in the zone—“Bu-but Spider-Man-” Peter tried to justify.

“Not Spider-Man, kid,” said Tony, leaning on to the table. “Peter Parker. Maybe it’s best if they just know who Peter Parker really is.”

Harley didn’t miss the hopeful tilted lilt in Tony’s voice, or the way his eyes were practically sparkling. It struck Harley then, and he couldn’t believe someone of his intelligence (or Peter’s, for that matter) hadn’t seen it yet: there was a small push in Tony’s voice, keen encouragement, and he was staring at Peter like he hung the stars.

It took Harley’s breath away: Tony wanted, desperately, for everyone to know exactly who Peter was to him—but most of all, he wanted _Peter_ to acknowledge himself as Tony Stark’s son. The moment was lost on Peter at his side, but Harley saw all of it – the longing, the tug at the corner of Tony’s lip, the softness in his eyes. For a genius in his line of work, he wore his expressions so openly. Too openly: at this rate, someone would clock on before they should.

Peter was too open with his expressions, too ( _Maybe it’s a Stark trait_ , thought Harley). “Can I think about it?” Peter asked, and Harley controlled himself enough not to grab his shoulders and shake him vigorously. Goddamn, this was almost tedious; now he’d worked out the problem, and seemingly no one else had, all he wanted was to say it and put the thing to bed.

Peter was Tony’s legacy in this world, and if there was one thing Harley was sure of when it came to Tony Stark it was how much he loved acknowledgement of his achievements, whether highlight or failure; there wasn’t a difference to him.

Except, possibly, when it came to Peter Parker.

“Of course, Pete,” said Tony, though his smile was stretched almost thinly.

The tension was far too much for Harley to handle. “I’m sure this’ll all work out fine,” he said for something to say, to break the coming silence before it happened. It jolted Peter from his thoughts. Harley reached to grab his own mug, and wrinkled his nose when he realised his coffee had gone cold. “I’mma make another-” he gestured at the table. “D’you want one, Tony? Rhodey?”

“Uh, sure. Thank you, Harley.” Rhodey pushed his _War Machine_ -branded cup across.

Harley waited a moment longer to see if Tony wanted one, forcing a smile in the burst of awkwardness. Just as he was about to ask again, the older man passed it to Harley without even a glance in his direction, too focused on Peter who was stumbling up from his chair—almost late for school, oh dear. Harley would have huffed, but Tony’s fond chuckle stopped him in his tracks.

He was a sinner to think it, but... What did Harley have to do to hear that sound directed at him?

+ _Thursday night_.

To be fair, it was Harley’s fault. He’d found the damned engine in a burnt-out Ford at the side of road, no owner present, and decided it was worth a glance (after all, he was a mechanic); maybe, if he could prove it worked, he could convert it like he’d done with the Bentley’s.  
(Engines are great; they can be pulled apart, put back together and used to power a hundred things—not just a car. Frankly, they’re almost wasted in cars.)

But before he did anything, he wanted to make sure the damn thing worked. In hindsight, he probably should have run it past Tony first, and had the man actually in attendance when he plugged it in—  
Then again, who was to say he’d have the time for one of Harley’s whims?

So, yes, the explosion was his fault. Did he deserve the cold shoulder? Yes. Did it hurt? Immensely.

But, in a funny way, it almost hurt more to have Peter save him.

It’s not something that anyone talks about – why would they? – No. No one ever talks about that—about that sudden moment when your mortality draws in and everything’s happening and you shut your eyes and accept your fate – only to be denied it a second later and saved from certain death (or incredibly bad injury). It tore Harley apart in a different way to the physical as he was thrown across the room, experiencing his life in an instant before realising he wasn’t dead. He was nowhere close to being dead.

Tony and Bruce arrived not even a minute later.

“Peter!”

“Check Harley,” Peter coughed to Harley’s far left.

“That’s what Bruce is here for, kiddo,” said Tony immediately and without pause. Harley felt the floor beneath him pulse with Bruce’s huge steps, and groaned when the man’s giant hands came down on him.

His vision was blurred over, lying on his side, trying with failure to curl into himself as Bruce’s hands worked to put him into a handling position. “Hey – Harley—Harley?” Concern wrapped Bruce’s unusually conflicted tone, and Harley managed – somehow – to pick himself up without much help from the man until he was actually sitting, when Bruce carefully guarded his shoulders with an arm. “There you go; that’s it.”

Harley raised a hand to touch his wet cheek. He dropped it straight into the cradle of his lap immediately, seeing red, smoothing it down his tee-shirt. “Is—is Peter OK?” he asked, tilting his head up with a groan.

Bruce steadied his neck. “He’s all right—you’ve had a shock, though; getting blown up is always a bit of a trauma.” His attempted chuckle was deep and rumbling and made Harley think of his old cat.

Pressing back his shoulders with another pained sound, Harley lifted his eyes and recognised the fuzzy shapes across the room—Tony was hunched over Peter, the boy practically in his lap; he’d removed his own hoodie to wrap him in for the moment. Harley watched Peter’s twitching fingers, knowing the healing process had already begun.

“FRIDAY, gimme a damage report on my kid would you, girl?” came Tony’s shaking voice.

 _My kid_ , thought Harley, his body slumping forwards.

“It appears Peter has suffered a damaged hand, Boss, and several cuts to his face and arms. He also appears to have very mild concussion symptoms.” She paused. “The concussion is an earlier occurrence. It’s only symptomatic, now.”

 _It must be nice to hear those words_.

“Only symptomatic—FRI, what the Hell are you saying?” God. Tony sounded a wreck. “How did he get a concussion?”

 _And not to feel exhausted by the reality of them_.

Harley tilted into Bruce’s arm suddenly, the room spinning.

“Oh, shi—Tony,” Bruce called, but whether he was acknowledged Harley didn’t rightly know; he could see through the ebbing fog Tony was practically glued to Peter. “I’m gonna take Harley down to the medbay and have Helen stitch this cut. Are you OK tak-”

FRIDAY interrupted. “Boss. Miss Potts is on the line.”

Harley stopped listening as Bruce hauled him up, the pressure causing him to wince. He heard the good doctor give a reassuring sound, but the words were nearly lost as he slowly succumbed to his hammering head and fell nearly completely limp. His head throbbed as Pepper’s voice came down from the ceiling and, remarkably, Harley was nearly brought to his senses when he heard his name on her lips; “—Is Harley OK?—”

As Bruce carried him out of the room, Tony’s reply came out exhausted, “Minor lab explosion, Pep. Harley’s fine. Peter’s...”

 _Harley’s fine_.

Yeah, Harley’s always fine.

+

“I cannot believe you, Harley!”

Harley turned over in his hospital bed with a groan, his head splintering. The blanket slid off him.

“Tony—Tony, he needs to rest – Dr. Cho says he has a minor concussion-”

“What he did was absolutely irresponsible—he could have gotten himself killed! He could have injured Peter-”

“Tony, Peter’s fine.”

“Steve. His _fingers_ are broken.”

“And guess what? They’ll heal by tomorrow night, if not before. I’ve done it, too, Tony: we’re enhanced, so if they’re set right in the beginning everything will be completely fine – a minor twinge, maybe, for a few hours, but...,” Steve trailed off into a sigh, and then added, “Yes, it was irresponsible what Harley did, but now is not the time—he needs to rest.”

A couple seconds went by. The heavy tension pushed against Harley’s head and he whined again, fresh tears pinpricking his eyes.

“Fine, fine.” Tony’s footsteps trailed away.

All was quiet for a moment, just the bleeping of machines, and then Steve’s large hands reached over and tugged the blanket back over Harley, tucking him back in. “There you go, son. You just get yourself better now.”

+

(Harley had the Starkphone model S6; it was a few years out of date now, but it still worked fine—plus, the alterations he’d personally made had it running faster than the S7, anyway. He knew he’d have to adjust it a bit when the S8 came out in a few months, though.)

+ **Present: Friday**.

Of course, a phone’s only important if it works at the right time—and, thankfully, Harley’s phone always worked; it was his after all.  
Harley was in R&D when it happened: his phone buzzed a few times impatiently on the table he was comparing notes at, and more of habit than necessity, he ghosted his finger lengthways across and checked the Breaking News Alert:

“ **THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION, MARIA ROSENDALE, HAS TODAY CLAIMED SHE HAS MET THE SON OF TONY STARK, AND HEIR TO STARK INDUSTRIES.** ”

Well. Shit.

It was bad, but Harley couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

+

The whole of R&D went into uproar. Rumours flew around, and then it was called a hoax, and then some claimed it was _Harley_ —

Which, of course, he had to laugh at. After all, wouldn’t it make more sense for it to be _Peter?_ —

... Maybe he shouldn’t have said that aloud.

So what if it was maybe his fault R&D ran with it. It had to come out eventually.

+

If you asked Harley Keener what went wrong, he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the moment he threatened a kid (he was pretty sure they were about the same age, but dammit if he hadn’t lived more of a life than that pampered asshole), or maybe it was the moment Peter stopped Harley from having said kid blacklisted by every company and university in the USA, or maybe the moment he saw the teacher being an abusive asshole—or maybe it was when Harley looked at Peter and saw too much of _Tony_ in him.

Maybe it was all of the above.

Harley had always believed there were a certain amount of people born to live tragic lives. He was also of the belief he was one of them.

Peter, too, fell into this category—as did Tony. Maybe that was why they were all so ‘ _connected_ ’.

Then again, were they?

Harley had lived his life guarding his every thought and expression, but he knew when his head was just carrying on through the whirlwind, and by the steeled confidence in Peter’s eyes he knew too: the open disapproval Harley had fought to keep down was on show. He clenched his teeth and sunk bitten fingers into the exposed flesh of his arms, his chequered sweater tied and hanging around his waist.

Flicking his eyes to the other people surrounding them, Harley evened out his features into something dismissive. He thought he said something, but it was all automatic; he looked at that teacher, the bullying one—he could see it in the man’s face: the pain, the exhaustion. God. How hadn’t this man jumped off a bridge already?

Suddenly, FRIDAY was talking—Automotive? Wanted him? Well. At least someone seemed to. “Thanks, FRIDAY.” Harley turned to Martyn – the tour guide; he might have recognised him, but then again, he didn’t. The confidence was new, definitely. “You better get back to your field trip, huh? R&D’s right there. Waiting for you all.”

“Ah, you’re right,” said the tour guide, and he gave a little laugh which was definitely a sign of his discomfort—not that Harley was really thinking about him. He wasn’t exactly important. Martyn – that was his name, right? Someone mentioned it – said something else but, honestly, Harley blanked it—and the next few comments, too, until he saw the teachers begin to depart with the students.

Peter hung back, his expression on the edge of shocked, and Harley’s eyes widened before they narrowed in one dramatic motion and he strode the two steps between them to grab the other teenager’s wrist and tug him around

Peter’s face distorted immediately. “Harley.”

“Peter,” Harley replied, wetting his lips as he sought out the right words—the words he’d had floating in his head for years but only just realised they were true—more than true. They were justified. They were right. He opened his mouth, closed it again, swallowed; repeat.

Peter actually looked a little bored as he said, “I’m sorry, Harley, but I couldn’t-”

 _There it is_. “You’re right. You couldn’t.” Laughter bubbled in Harley’s throat but he fought it down, pressed his lips into a straight line as he stared at Peter—and saw in those gem-like eyes a world reflected Harley couldn’t process, and yet there was a spark of fear, a look of something as he stared into Harley’s eyes—and Harley hoped they said all the words he couldn’t, but he wasn’t holding out for them to be understood in silence and stares so he barked, “You’ve a martyr’s spirit, Peter.” Harley stayed cautious of his word choice, dropping his hold on Peter and turning away. He pressed his shoulders down, tilted his head up to the ceiling and inhaled. He was content to leave it there until he heard the smallest squeak, the tiniest possibility of a rebuke.

But when he heard it, he couldn’t help the laughter that slipped past his lips and he threw a glance over his shoulder, watching Peter fumble back a few paces as if in fear of a mortal like Harley. Suddenly, all the words he’d thought of, all the moments he’d spent delirious, all the pondering hours when he’d tried to label these new relationships—suddenly they all boiled down to one thing. A simple thing. Something Tony and Peter shared, but Harley knew in his heart of hearts he would never be part of.

With a cruel, joyless smirk, he said over his shoulder to Peter, “You really are a Stark.” Then Harley got into the elevator and instead of going to automotive he asked FRIDAY to take him to the common.

“Are you quite sure, Harley? Automotive-”

“I’m sure, FRI,” Harley replied, swallowing back the retort he had for the AI’s mothering. He didn’t need any darn mothering. “Common. My bag’s there, right?”

She paused, considering, the elevator stalling, before it lurched upwards with more force and she gave an almost nervous-sounding, “Yes, Harley.”

A second later, Harley stepped out of the elevator and into the Avengers’ Halls. A few of them greeted him – Clint, Wanda, Sam, and Bucky to be precise. He smiled back, but otherwise kept his expression neutral and uncomplicated. He searched through the contrasting and moving bodies surrounding him for what he wanted, and found his bag – the important one; his laptop, notebooks. The one he needed; the other was just clothes.

Reaching up to brush a hand down his ripped cheek, Harley winced at the applied pressure. He walked across the room and picked the backpack up after checking he had everything inside of it. He zipped it shut. Slinging it over one shoulder, Harley made for the elevator.

“Harley! Where are you off to?” Steve appeared; cool kindness painting his face and voice, but with a level of confusion at Harley’s backpack. “Headin’ out, son?”

“Yep,” Harley replied, patting his pockets. “I’ll be back.”

“Oh, OK?” Steve responded, following Harley back to the elevator. “Do you want, I dunno, company? You’re acting a little... off?”

“Am I?” Harley blinked up at him, meeting his eyes; he reflected back the strength in them. After a moment of collective eye-contact, Harley broke off in a forced chuckle and grinned. “I just gotta clear my head, Steve, but thanks.”

He made to go into the elevator, but Steve’s hand on his shoulder stopped him, “Son-”

“ _I’m not your son_ ,” Harley bit back, interrupting, hitting Steve’s hand away. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tony walking into the room from the connected kitchenette with Rhodey and made a dash for the elevator. “FRIDAY, main entrance,” he muttered when his back hit the mirror, and he watched as the elevator doors shut on the image of a dysfunctional family.

+

Harley stepped out into the main lobby, striding along the hallway, his grip ever-tightening on his backpack’s strap. He raked a hand through his hair, pushing it into some semblance of managed and pushed down the groan threatening to slip from his lips when he came up against a knot.

“Harley,” said FRIDAY. “Please put your earpiece in. Boss is asking for yo-”

“Mute,” Harley said in response, cutting off the AI. “Askin’ for me, huh? What does he want to blame on me now?” he asked no one, because he knew FRIDAY wouldn’t reply – at least not for eleven minutes; her standardised muted time without interference. Just as he rounded the bend, his phone began to ring, blasting out a mash-up of _AC/DC_ songs—Tony’s ringtone. Harley slid his phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen, his mouth flattening into a line. He denied the call. It started ringing again almost immediately.

Harley denied the call a second time and hit ‘ _block_ ’ before it could ring again. “Fuck off, Tony,” he muttered, scrunching up his nose. Just as he was about to shove his phone into his pocket, the screen lit up with a picture of him and Steve on the sofa; Bucky had taken it just the other night. Harley had his tongue poking out and an eyebrow raised, pointing at the Captain—who’d copied Harley’s pose immediately. They’d fallen about laughing afterwards, when Harley got his phone back and had a chance to see it. Turns out, Bucky was a great photographer.

He pressed the emerging smile down as _Imagine Dragon_ ’s _Whatever It Takes_ started playing – the ringtone he’d assigned Steve – and, with a heavy heart, Harley denied the call. He didn’t block it. Instead, he muted his phone and shoved it into his pocket, letting it ring again and again as he walked out through security – maybe said goodbye, maybe didn’t – and towards the accumulated press standing about the reception area.

One young woman – from the _Daily Bugle_ approached him with immediate enthusiasm and a camerawoman in tow. “Hello! Debby Ferraro of the _Daily Bugle_. What can you tell us about the fabled Stark heir? You aren’t... him, are you?”

Harley sputtered, coughing out a laugh. “God no, lady.” He corrected his backpack, putting it on. “That camera rolling?”

“It is!” Debby replied with a bounce to her whole body. “I’m just seeing if I can collect a quick interview with anyone who might have insider knowledge. We’re currently live to Time Square!”

“Well, I do have insider knowledge,” said Harley, sitting into his hips. “I know exactly who it is.” He watched Debby’s eyes go wide, leaning in, her mouth slightly parted as she waited for her big scoop.

 _God. It could be so easy to ruin a life_. But... Peter didn’t deserve that no matter how bitter Harley felt. It was his bitterness to continue on with; not something he should share.

Harley took in a breath, looked into the camera and said, “But I’m not telling you.”

Debby jolted back. “Uh, well, I- are you sure you can’t give us something... sir? We are actually live right now... I’m sure our viewers are on the very edge of their seats at home...”

“Well, they can stay there, then,” Harley replied, and he turned his head to the doorway. “I’m not going to do that to him. He’s gotta decide for himself what he does—he doesn’t need you assholes doing that for him.” He flicked his wrist at her when she took in a long breath and muttered something like _language_.

With a smile, Harley walked away and out the door.

+

Peter Parker had a smile as bright as the sun.

And Harley had learnt he liked the cold.

+

Harley Keener was a normal kid from Rosehill, Tennessee.

His early life had been marked by five significant events in a set order. Currently, the sixth was underway if you didn’t count the Snap and the Blip and everything else that had happened over the last few years of his lived life.

The sixth event was taking place on what had promised to be an unaccountable Friday for most people: It began with Harley turning a corner and heading down the same alleyway he always took to get to Central Park, and it continued on with him getting pepper-sprayed, tied up, blindfolded, gagged and chucked in the back of a van.

Unlike all the other events of his life, Harley couldn’t see exactly how this one was going to end.

 _Maybe Iron Man will save me_ , he thought, drooling over his gag with laughter, and got himself pistol-whipped upside the head a third time. _But then again, he probably won’t have time_.


	2. And Icarus's life, it has only just begun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Standing on the cliff face  
> Highest foe you'll ever grace  
> It scares me half to death  
> Look out to the future  
> But it tells you nothing  
> So take another breath" \- Bastille

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _*Lays chapter down gently*_ //Title is from Bastille's Icarus, as is the chapter summary.
> 
>  **Please read/heed the tags.** This is the chapter most of them are for. I am not overstating this: this chapter is brutal.  
> Please stay safe and take care of your mental health. -J

“Hey, kid! Time to look pretty for _daddy!_ ”

“Get that darn camera outta his face, dude. He’s still blotched up from the ‘spray—an’ I don’t want anyone thinkin’ we threw acid at ‘im. There’s a level, ‘ya know? ‘Member them pictures of Stark in Afghanistan? Any worse than that an’ we got issues.”

“Just wanna check out how photogenic he is. Gotta wait a day or two anyway to film the thing—awh, jeez, he’s pretty though – aren’t you, baby boy? God... Just take a look at that mouth—he’s got Stark’s mouth, I think; real cruel-looking. I can’t decide whether you look better with the gag or without it, damn; wish I could have some fun with you...”

“Are you sure this is the right one, dude? He were a bit easy to get – I woulda thought he’d ‘ave a bodyguard shadowing ‘im.”

“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? If he’d had someone following him, he’d have been more noticeable.”

“Still. Bit weird to let yer son walk out through the world’s press, isn’t it? D’ya get his phone, dude?”

“I got his phone, I got it... Frankly, it’s damn genius. Have the kid walk right outta there pulling a damn Tony Stark stunt to that bimbo from _The Daily Bugle_. He was probably heading around to go straight back in through some random hidden door. All contrived, I tell you – awh, baby, c’mon, don’t pull away—lemme see those lips a minute.”

“... Still think it’s a bit too good to be true we actually just kidnapped Tony Stark’s freakin’ son, dude.”

+ _Some time later at an undisclosed location ??_

Harley Keener was good with numbers. He had to be. He’d practically run his mom’s budget for years and learnt early the trials and tribulations which came with it—and, though he tried not to dwell, there was the drugs issue he’d faced as a kid. Counting out pills, learning powder weights and liquid measurements; some kids used blocks to learn to count; Harley had used coke, LSD and any liquor his mom had left on the table.

When you get clean, you don’t exactly forget how to measure shit.

So, yeah, he’d always been good with numbers; but that meant fuck all when you were accounting for time spent slumped over in the same hard-backed chair with a chill spring wind blowing on him from above and aside, causing his nose to constantly run. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the dark of the blindfold either, or how long his jaw had been practically unlatched around the ball-gag with his tongue forced to sit immobile, putting stress on his entire mouth. It was only ever removed when a hand, gloved in latex, dragged and patted him around his face and then fed him spoonfuls of lukewarm and soupy noodles—which were absolutely disgusting.

The only time he got out the damn chair was when they took him to the bathroom – a humiliating and invasive task they took all too much pleasure partaking in. They slapped him if he lurched away from their wrapped hands, clinical and sterile to his nose; Harley started to hate the plasticky feeling almost immediately. They never touched him bare-handed, as if he was diseased.

It couldn’t have been that long when they decided to shoot him up with a needle of something, leaving him gasping and thrashing, falling with his chair on to the hard floor and, by the present wetness on his cheek, ripping open the stitched cut. His kidnappers sat him up again and put another needle in his arm, and then another and another after that—it took five needles for the pain to ease off and for Harley to fall into the docile state between sleep and consciousness, drool dripping constantly from his mouth. The one obsessed with his lips dabbed them with an already-sodden tissue, but Harley couldn’t find it in him to be disgusted.

A voice splintered his head moments later, “I can’t fuckin’ believe we got the wrong kid, dude.”

“He came outta the Tower—not my fault he wasn’t the right kid.”

“How’d we even get this so darn wrong? This kid-” Harley was too out of it to register the sharp kick to his ankle. “He doesn’t even look like Stark all that much.”

“OK, OK. I agree; his bone structure’s all wrong.” The other voice laughed a little. “C’mon. Look at the bright side: At least no one’ll miss him—it gives us a chance to try out some stuff instead of just going for the money.”

“... We still need the money, dude.”

After that, Harley’s headspace floundered to a halt and he fell into a restless sleep.

+

Harley learnt quickly how his life started to repeat. Wake up; eat soupy noodles (or something equally disgusting and underdone); bathroom break; bruise and bloody his wrists in an attempt to free himself (he got less able to do this as time wore on, though); have burning ointment applied to those wrists; bathroom break; squirm and thrash as latex hands smoothed over his body and face; and then get shot up in any place their increasingly large and imposing needles could get to.

The first needle in his face stung, but no worse than any of the ones on his hands and on his arms, or his neck and shoulders; if anything, it had started to hurt _less_ lately. Although the dim pain was a constant friend, and the soreness a close ally, Harley almost found himself glad for it the longer he spent unable to see the world around him past the white flash of a door opening to the outside every-so-often. Sometimes he even heard the birds.

At least the pinpricks of pain told him he wasn’t dead.

+

They weren’t drugs, Harley soon enough realised; whatever they were shooting him up with were not drugs. It took him a while to recognise it but, when he did, he couldn’t help but feel just slightly accomplished.

Of course, he still didn’t know what they were injecting him with, but at least he could cross that off the metaphorical list.

+

Harley wasn’t sure how long his schedule stayed in place – he gave up counting – but he knew when it differed. The day the gloved hands came around his head, the day he was gifted them, was a day he would come to remember as The Day.

The headphones sitting snug over his ears blast a straight and constant stream of music, and he rapidly learnt it was his own damned playlist (legit; the playlist was actually saved as The Damned Playlist). They’d gotten into his phone and found it, obviously, and now all he had to listen to were the same twelve songs he knew all the lyrics to: _Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Memories, Last of the Real Ones, The Phoenix, Courtesy Call, Glitter and Gold, Mechanical Instinct, Bleeding Out, I’m So Sorry, Natural, Rubik’s Cube_ and _Icarus_. What the fuck.

What glorious irony. What a... weird torture method.

He might have laughed once: if this was how kidnappers treated their victims, then what the Hell was all the fuss about? Besides the not-drugging, the touching, the shit food and the, well, the fact he had actually been kidnapped. The music stayed on 24/7 nearly, and no longer was Harley privy to the delightful conversations the two men (he’d deducted it was two and started referring to them as Tweedledee and Tweedledum) had around him. In fact, the only time he heard the silence now, when they took away his music, was when they fed him but even then he could pick out the strains of song from the headphones set to one side. While he ate, his kidnappers spoke lowly and soft. No longer, it seemed, were they content to let Harley eavesdrop on their chatter.

That’s all right; he had his music, anyway.

+

The first time it happened, Harley had just finished listening to _Courtesy Call_. At first, he wasn’t sure what the feeling was or why it was pressing against him, causing droplets of sweat to bud on his hairline. It cut close, just barely skimming against his as-of-late fragile skin, and the heat was unlike anything he’d felt for ages. He inhaled and exhaled as _Bleeding Out_ started playing; a soft melody to his current predicament, as he struggled to stop his nerves fraying from the mysterious presence.

Two minutes later he felt it proper. On his hand—the heat, the sudden numbness, the pressured burn, and for the first time in what felt like weeks he ripped his throat raw in a scream.

+

The next time, he got a few seconds of reprieve after his first broken sob. Latex hands touched his aching face, removed the ball-gag, and Harley’s eyes brimmed with tears enough to soak his blindfold. The song playing was _I’m So Sorry_ and, as the pain returned – this time to his leg – it felt apt as he screamed for someone to save him from this all time low. He didn’t catch himself asking for dad but later, in the haze of the song’s fourth run-through of the day – as he hoarsely mouthed along and around the gag to the lifeblood lyrics – he remembered the palpable fear of his head’s second-there, second-gone thought of: _Dad’s not coming_.

Harley didn’t exactly know who he considered Dad, especially when he could no longer picture much behind the darkness of his blindfold.

+

_Ting, ting_. The pain came again; but this time the ball-gag stayed lodged in his mouth. _Ting, ting_ went _Glitter and Gold_ as his arm went numb from the burning. _Ting, ting_ went the music and Harley spittled, as his skin fizzled and burst. _Rise up_ said his music, and Harley fell further.

 _Ting, ting_.

+

Harley was a genius, but Harley knew he was slipping by the fourth instalment. Had dropped like a lead weight by the fifth—but he’d worked out what it was by the sixth, when _Mechanical Instinct_ was playing and telling him to run for his life.

It was steam. Hot, burning steam. It was slowly melting his skin, blistering it, making it peel and stripping through every one of his nerves.

The seventh time, Harley nearly breathed a sigh of relief when the hot pressure split the skin around his shoulder: at least now he knew what was slowly killing him, and the pain, although present, decreased with each new smothering over his already numbed skin.

+

Sometimes they chucked a bucket of cold water over him; it was the only wash he got and it only furthered the pain when it started to dry and everything started to weep – including Harley himself.

+

Harley had been mouthing his gag, trying to mime the lyrics to _Memories_ , when the headphones were ripped off his head and his stomach practically dropped out as he felt the heat coming closer to his face. He breathed harder, in and out through his nose, starting to whine from the pressure of the deafening silence, aching to be reunited with the music keeping him safe and sane.

The heat started on his chin. Without his headphones, as the steam swelled over his skin, he could actually hear Tweedledee and Tweedledum’s conversation:

“Damn this – is it even working? I’m not seeing any difference.”

“It’s doin’ somethin’, dude. He said it would take a couple of weeks to a couple of months to kick in—might I remind ya this were yer idea? I did say we coulda just put him up on the black market and fetch us a cold million, but _no_ , ya wanted to have _fun_.”

“Awh, c’mon – you were the one who thought it was worth a try! You bought the stuff! When I said _fun_ , I meant the _other kind_ you have _in a bed_.”

“Ya woulda damaged the merchandise.”

“What? And you haven’t damaged the merchandise?”

Harley breathed out heavily, openly sobbing, as the steam pressured over the plastic of the ball-gag and burnt his lips into blisters. It touched his nose next. Might Harley remind you he was a genius? It was one of those things he held on to for dear life nowadays—and as a genius, he knew when his nose was buggered. That’s it, proper done; he’d not smell anything ever again.

By the end of this session, maybe he wouldn’t even be able to see—not that he could now, not with the blindfold.

The steam continued on a steady path over Harley’s face. He didn’t know how long after he was in immeasurable amounts of pain; he just knew he would be for some time. When the headphones were replaced over his ringing ears, he caught the opening notes of _Icarus_.

How appropriate.

+

When they next removed his ball-gag, Harley couldn’t help but just repeat in monotone the lyrics going through his head—his lifeline to what he knew was true, his safety, his only peace. He couldn’t find any strength to pull his bloody arms at the ropes anymore, but he felt the telltale dribble over his skin from the open sores.

What they did next was unusual, but he didn’t put anything past the two of them anymore. He’d tried time and again to construct some image of what he thought they might look like, but to Harley they weren’t human. They were blobs of meat, living only to dehumanise him more with time, using increasingly brutal methods.

Harley knew what a collar felt like from college experimentation, but nothing could have prepared him for the heaviness; the chill of it; the drag over his skin. It pressed against his throat, choking him, but still Harley reached for his songs: He was always aware of them, of them with him, even in sleep they sought to protect him from the sightless horrors he was experiencing. He spent every ounce of spare energy differentiating them from one another, never wanting to spiral them into one another. They didn’t deserve that.

As the collar tightened and the steam returned to his numb fingers, Harley screamed the lyrics to _Last of the Real Ones_ , inter-splicing them with cries and curses and thumps of his shoeless feet on the wet floor. His kidnappers cackled, driven mad by their experiment, and Harley finally acknowledged himself when he called out, “Dad! Dad! Where are you? Dad?” It hurt; his throat hurt; his jaw hurt; his lungs heart—his heart hurt. “Why aren’t you here? Da-Dad! I-I’m here! Dad— _Dad_!”

+

Later, when the song came around again, he dribbled against his ball-gag and sobbed into his blindfold. _I’m done with having dreams_ , said the lyrics, and Harley took them to his broken heart in the cold chill. His muscles had wasted away, and his conscious ability to consider himself more than just who he was – Harley – was fading. That was it. He was Harley.

What and who Harley was, well, that was up for debate.

+

When they removed the collar, the gag and his headphones, Harley coughed up blood. Then, as he felt it drool over his bloodied lips, he screamed, “Burn in Hell!” in time to _Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing_.

He didn’t know whether he was saying it to them or to his own tortured soul at this point. He wasn’t sure it mattered.

+

Harley cried sad tears to _Rubik’s Cube_. He thinks his kidnappers got off on it.

 _Dad._ Harley knew he wasn’t coming. He also knew, in his heart, he had no right to use that word because Tony Stark was not his father.

But that didn’t stop his pleas, or his cries; it did not stop Harley from asking why he wasn’t coming to get him, even after what he was sure was months now. It didn’t stop him, when they removed his gag, from screaming whatever throat he still had left in some vain and tired hope that maybe, just maybe, if Tony was nearby he might hear Harley and he might come for him, collect him, scoop him up into his arms like he did with Peter and say:

“ _Shush, my beautiful boy, quiet; I’m here for you, now. I’m not going away. Hey, hey, kid, don’t worry. You’re safe with me. You’ll be OK; c’mon, kiddo. You’ll be OK. I love you—you’re so, so loved, Harley. You’re so loved_.”

+

He had a very odd experience when listening to _The Phoenix_.

Instead of Tony, Harley’s thoughts took him to Steve. Steve’s worry for him, the gentle reminders to be good to himself, the quiet phone calls in the evening – that one time he’d brought Harley in close after his mother’s death, and promised he would do anything he could to make everything better.

“ _Make everything better, please—I want to be better. I want to be better. I want to be better_.”

Harley couldn’t remember much else of his thoughts, but he didn’t think he needed to. When he cried that day, as they pricked his jaw and steamed him again, and he thought he heard cruel, sick laughter, the name on his lips was _Steve_.

+

It was during _Natural_ the pain went away. Done. Sap. Gone for good. Harley continued breathing around his gag, kept crying through his blindfold, but all the numbness wore out suddenly and he listlessly let them steam his skin, as his fingers curled around the ends of his chair’s arms and he realised, with biting impatience—

 _I’m gonna make it_. It came to him as the lyrics of the song, yes, but it was all he could hold himself to believe in anymore.

+

His skin started flaking, it felt like, and kept bleeding. The steaming stopped. The needles were gone. Harley’s jaw broke down as the ball-gag’s straps dug into his blooded-over skin, cut fine lines into the red blisters around his face and, eventually, it unlatched itself one day when they were feeding him. Latex gloves pushed it up and let it fall down, knocked it to the left and then right, and, in the fidgeting silence as Harley’s head rang with the lyrics to _Courtesy Call_ , he heard his kidnapper say, “Huh. Looks like it really isn’t working, then.”

He got a slap for that, but he didn’t even flinch. To most people, it would probably be a horrifying revelation – to lose the sense of pain – but to Harley, having already lost so much, it seemed like just another event of his life.

+

They left him for a while, and really only came back to help him with bathroom breaks – not that Harley could find any strength to walk there anymore. Eventually though, as all things have to, everything changed. He thought it might have been on a Tuesday, because he liked Tuesdays.

He wasn’t sure what did it, exactly. Maybe they got bored hoping someone was coming to rescue him, maybe a deal fell through, or maybe they’d had enough of watching him go off his head screaming mash-ups and mixtures of the same ten songs repeatedly into his gag and into the open air until he was crying for his non-existent father and his jaw had practically broken. Maybe they just ran out of cash to feed him, or maybe all this had been was someone’s sick idea of a fun few weeks.

Or maybe, as Tweedledum had said, whatever they wanted to work just wasn’t working.

It started when Harley woke from his latest nap and opened his eyes. Instead of the black, itchy fabric, he was met with brightness from all sides—he had to screw his eyes shut from the light inflicting onto them. He immediately tried to close his mouth, but a snap of pain splintered through his jaw and left his teeth and gums stinging. Curling over and on to his side, Harley lifted a fragile, shaking hand to touch his other face—it was sticky, dirty and felt like coarse and untreated leather. He didn’t want to assume what any of the mess on him actually was. Through slit eyes, he could see his arms were bumpy and scarred, red blisters dotted between the rubbings, the dark melt and scorch marks across his skin.

It took three hours and seventeen minutes for him to find the courage and strength to pull himself on to his hands and knees—and he crashed forwards when he did, smashing his face on to the forest floor. He’d established it was a forest when it began raining and his muffled hearing caught the first droplets dappling on leaves; at first, he’d had no idea what the natural sound was until it started hitting his sizzled skin. _My music—my music—where’s my music?_

As his jaw hit the undergrowth, he managed some pitying scream, something raw and animalistic ripping through his throat like fire through a paper mill.

 _Look on the bright side, Harley. At least the air’s better out here_. Was it, though?

Harley managed to crawl across the twig-scattered floor, his ripped jeans catching on sticks and stones, and mudding up the aching, bruised skin around his knees. After another while of laying against the gnarled roots of a tree, he managed somehow to open his eyes – the dark was approaching, the light of the moon his saviour – and he looked curiously around his clearing with his hazed vision; there was blood – his, he assumed – and his backpack had been chucked nearby, along with his phone. He pulled himself across to it like a starved man seeing crumbs, gripping it in shaking fingers, dropping it, picking it back up—repeat, until he threw himself back against the tree, the world spinning, and managed to plunge it into his lap with a frail gasp for the shock against his covered, boiled flesh.

He ran his finger down the side and watched it light up – almost fully charged. Harley’s face drew into a sort of smile, slow and calculated, quivering. His kidnappers had charged his phone before leaving him out in the middle of nowhere? How kind.

Everything on it looked normal. Nothing seemed to have been messed with—no ransom texts had been sent, no new calls had been made from it. His playlist had been mangled up and mostly deleted except for The Twelve. Normalcy tore at him and he jabbed one at random, letting the vastly-familiar sound of it fill his clearing and his warped head.

It didn’t bring him back to the steaming or the needling or anything else in that cursed vacuum. It didn’t put him in bonds and rupture his heart into a panicked state—he wasn’t that sort. Not then, not now. The music swept through him – _you better run for your life_ – and Harley started to laugh; coughing built up in his throat and he took in long gulps of sacred air, resting his head back against the tree as he struggled against the irony and his collapsing lungs.

He brushed his fingers over the screen, going to his call log. Harley stared at the pictures and the names; he recognised them, thought he should probably know them by more than just what they were in front of him: A name and a number, with a picture beside them. Maybe he did and he’d just forgotten how to read because none of the letters made any sense to him.

Pressing one, the picture full-screened and he stared at –himself. At least, he thought it was himself. The boy there didn’t have imprints on his arms, or blood over his face, and he wasn’t totally starvation. He looked healthy, practically happy, and Harley really wondered if that was him from months ago. It should be him, he thought he would know himself from a picture, but perhaps he looked too young, too modest, too ready to take shit from anyone and walk it off.

Beside him in the picture was Captain America. Steve Rogers. Harley wasn’t an idiot; no being kept captured could make him forget Steve Rogers.

As he stared at the picture, for God knows how long, his phone suddenly started to vibrate, to pour out different music to what he’d been listening to—he recognised it, knew he knew it—something about whatever it takes, and Harley chimed with that thought immediately.

In a nostalgic motion across the screen, Harley pressed accept call.

Silence rang from the other side for a second, and then a sudden, surprised voice said much too loudly, “Hello? Harley? Harley, is that you? Holy shit—you actually answered! Harley!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harley's Damned Playlist: (key; song name - band/singer)
>
>> Memories - Maroon 5  
> Icarus - Bastille  
> Wolf in Sheep's Clothing - Set It Off  
> The Phoenix - Fall Out Boy  
> The Last of the Real Ones - Fall Out Boy  
> Bleeding out - Imagine Dragons  
> Glitter and Gold - Barns Courtney  
> Courtesy Call - Thousand Foot Krutch  
> I'm So Sorry - Imagine Dragons  
> Natural - Imagine Dragons  
> Mechanical Instinct - Aviators  
> Rubik's Cube - Athlete


	3. I will be your scarecrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You tell me to hold on  
> Oh you tell me to hold on  
> But innocence is gone  
> And what was right is wrong"  
> Bleeding out, Imagine Dragons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //Title is from Bleeding Out, by Imagine Dragons.  
> The first part of this chapter corresponds directly with the second chapter of Open For All: The World Was Wide Enough [(CLICK HERE)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008431/chapters/57995059#workskin).  
> Thank you for your patience -J

Drool dripped down the side of Harley’s unwired jaw. He swallowed, coughed, and then the same voice – the unflinching accent, the unrivalled command, the earthy roughness of a long, hard winter – was shouting. In the background of the call, other voices started to twist into the pulse of conversation and then – then Steve Rogers was both calling into the receiver and away from it at once, “Harley! Harley answered! Som-someone answered! Oh, my God! Stark—Tony! For God’s sake, how do I track this?”

“You can’t be serious, Capsicle—he answered? Give me that—Harley? Is that you?”

_Tony?_

“Harley, can you speak? Harley—Goddammit (Harley blanked at that; at the voice speaking; he recalled that voice saying that to him, and it didn’t strike him with happiness. No. He’d heard that jagged edge before, and that worry; that waver)—Harley, wait a moment.” The call ended.

Harley dropped his shaking hand into his lap and stared at the phone, tilting his head to the left slightly. He waited a moment, as Tony had told him too, and waited another moment after that—and then the phone lit up again, this time asking for a video call.

A video—that... probably wasn’t a good idea considering he couldn’t even close his mouth.

Moving a shaking finger to press against the screen, Harley accepted the call and watched as – yes, he definitely recognised those faces: there was Tony, and Steve, and Bucky. Some of the Avengers (were they the Avengers anymore? Really?).

Silence greeted Harley—and then gasps, and then Steve had a hand over his mouth, looking close to sick as his eyes rolled shut and he turned away to catch his breath. Harley’s heart leapt into his throat—please, please, Steve, Mr. Rogers, don’t—

“FRIDAY,” said Tony, not talking to Harley—but that didn’t feel like a new occurrence. “Tra-track the location Harley is broadcasting from.”

“Sam!” Bucky called, stepping out of frame. “Can you help Nat get the quinjet ready? We’ve found Harley!”

A female voice shouted something and Harley winced, closing his eyes.

“Harley,” said a deep, soothing voice, and Steve was suddenly the only one in frame. “Harley, stay awake. We’re coming to get you, OK?” He carried his phone with him, his forehead mostly in frame—there was a small playpen in the background and a box of toys, and Harley didn’t remember those from his shaky memories of the Tower.

A lot had changed, huh?

Then again, what was change anyway?

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Steve repeated over and over, shaking his forehead in the camera’s view. “Tony! Should we get in touch with Peter?”

_... Peter?_

“He’s at the cram; he’s fine.” A beating pause, a moment when Steve’s eyebrow raised in frame and Harley just continued to stare blankly; to look but not see—and then Tony was stuttering: “Holy shit, Steve—he’s—he’s just—Harley’s _three miles out from the Compound_.”

“What?” The camera shook and Harley shifted his eyes to the image in the corner—of himself. He hovered a finger over it, contemplating; the blurred sight of himself was stifling, was calling to him and— Steve was still speaking: “We checked—we searched the whole area! Twice!”

Harley pressed the pad of his thumb against the image of his face just as Tony said, “Barton’s at the Compound now. I’ll get him over there, and we’ll meet them back at base instead—FRIDAY, alert Cho and tell her to set up—God, tell her to set up everything.”

“On it, Boss,” said the faint, pitched voice of the Tower’s AI in the background.

Harley stared at himself in the dark angle of the forest, at his picture, at the image of a young man he wasn’t sure was himself. But it was. He _knew_ it was. His hair had been drastically shortened, his cheeks were covered in dried and flaking blood, and his jaw was pinpricked with blooded-over spots. His neck had a razed circle around it—from the collar. He wasn’t sure what to make of his clothes, or the dried fluids on it – everything from mud to blood to things he wasn’t comfortable with thinking about, no less being seen with on his skin.

If he could still feel sick from the violence he’d endured, he’d feel sick right now.

“Harley? Harley?” That was Tony. Harley pressed the other photo again and saw Tony’s dark eyes staring at him with choking concern. “Are you awake?” A sniff, a swallow. Harley felt more than just dialled up with the hot pressure sitting against the edges of his skull as the world started to sharply come into focus; started to impede on his regular programming—God. When did owls get so damn loud? “Harley, stay awake—Oh, God, look at you.”

 _I just did_.

A breath. Cold, shattering fury—“Who did this? What son of a bitch did this?”

 _I don’t know, Captain. But I think it worked_.

+

Steve wouldn’t call off, so Harley was left listening to voices when he’d rather have his head in The Twelve Songs, in the music, in the ebb and flow of all he’d known for the past...

There was a lot of talking, some arguing, and Harley blanked most of it despite hearing his name amongst the rush of sound. His ears pricked, as he heard something running across the ground, and then all of a sudden Harley wasn’t alone.

The archer appeared on the fringe of the clearing, decked out with bow and arrows, and standing like the shadow of death with his silhouette tempered by the moon. Harley turned his head to him, heard Steve say something, and then Barton – Harley remembered Barton – came towards him, slow and careful; a hand out, no harm meant, the rough flesh of his palm showing. As Barton got closer, his eyes betrayed the look of horror he tried to keep off his face.

“Oh, my God. Kid,” said Barton, his voice on the wrong edge of breathless. He walked, step-beat-step, hesitating, his mouth opening and closing, but Harley barely thought on it. In the back of his head, he knew nothing else could hurt him; he was past the pain. It was almost laughable, how Barton tracked towards him like Harley was an injured deer he was meant to put out of its misery, but first he wanted to admire the beauty of a struggling animal. Harley held out the phone at Steve’s insistence and Barton took it, careful not to touch Harley’s shivering, nerve-shot fingers. “Steve. This is... Jesus... When you said he was hurt...”

“How bad is it, Barton?” came Tony’s voice, sounding a little pissed.

“It’s bad, Stark. I’ve... I’ve seen some shit – hell, I’ve done some shit. But, man, this is... God, he’s just a kid.”

“Can you get him back to the Compound?” asked Steve, a hopeful lilt in his tone peppered with calm persistence.

Barton started to shake his head. “I have absolutely no clue what injuries he’s got beneath his clothes—God, they’re hanging off him, Cap—his _jaw is hanging off him_.”

Steve started to say something, but— “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Tony shouted, getting increasingly loud. “FRIDAY, how far are we out?”

Harley’s eyes slid closed.

“Thirty minutes, Boss!”

“Shit! Shit! _Shit!_ ”

+

All Harley felt was tired. Like, really tired.

He had no clue what happened in the last day – the last week, month... whatever. No one would tell him how long he’d been gone and, worst of all, they’d taken his phone to check for location tracking and access to try and determine who’d kidnapped him. He wasn’t convinced they were having any luck.

But they’d taken his phone, and so his music. He kept fluttering in and out of consciousness – the noises amplifying with each loud blink of his eyes and—God. Was this how Peter felt? After the Bite? Was this...?

His head laughed, a voice there almost like his own laughed—maybe because he couldn’t, because his jaw was currently being bandaged after they’d applied biting disinfectant which left Harley with a pleasant buzz beneath the exterior pain he was bemoaning.

Harley flattened his hands on the sheets, covered in a multitude of bandages. He wasn’t sure for whose benefit they were; he knew the state of his hands, had felt the horrors being inflicted upon them. After being bandaged up and injecting him with a shot of morphine, the last sight Harley caught through his hazing vision was Helen Cho leaving, a hand pressing over her mouth and looking increasingly sick.

+

He slept through Steve and Tony talking; slept through their argument—well, mostly. Neither of them seemed to notice when his eyes flicked open and he caught their every elevated breath and—then Tony walked away, gripping his phone and it was too much— _Tony, no, don’t_ —Harley raised his hand, flinched at the inflicting pain in his joints telling him he was alive—and then Tony was gone, the sight buffering between Harley’s loud blinks and—

And then Steve turned to him.

“Harley!” he shouted, voice like a bubble beneath water—and Harley got the shock of it a second later.

Hot tears started to well up in the corners of his eyes, soaking into ruined skin, and he stretched out his shaking fingers and called from his wrecked, ripped throat, “Dad! I-I wan’ Dad!”

Steve was there a second later, his large hand curling over Harley’s fingers—and then Clint and Sam and Rhodey crowded him, and Harley tried to bat their careful hands off, but to no avail as Steve shushed him, as Clint fumbled with his morphine release and Harley took in a scattered breath and, seconds later, fell into his red parade of intoxicating slumber.

+

“Where’s Tony, then?” _Sam._

“He’s not coming back. He’s gone home.” _Rhodey_.

“What? He’s gone—gone back to the Tower? It’s storming out there! An-and Harley-” _Bruce_.

“Let him go.” _Steve. Steve. Steve. Steve_. “And for gosh sakes will you all shut up? Harley needs to sleep.” _Steve_.

A rough hand – or maybe that was just how his skin felt being touched – smoothed over Harley’s face and his fluttering eyelashes fell closed.

+

Harley Keener used to have a great ability with time. He used to be able to figure out what time it was and how long there was left of a movie, and even when the train would arrive if it was meant to arrive at ten but had been delayed by fifteen minutes and also there was a scattering of leaves on the rails which would take about ten more minutes to clear and the inevitable idiot passengers would mean there was another four minute delay and so Harley would be at least 27 minutes (give or take a couple seconds either side) late to meet his friends for lunch. He’d text them, make the bet, and then have his lunch paid for when he got it right—which he did about eight times out of ten.

In reality, he loved the complication of time, and how a little knowledge of it always impressed people. That was what he liked doing: he damn-well loved impressing people. He was damn good at it, too.

Once someone couldn’t be impressed anymore, (which did unfortunately happen sometimes) Harley quickly lost interest in their opinion of anything because when they weren’t impressed anymore he couldn’t really use them for anything, which meant they were almost entirely useless if he needed something. Impression bred usefulness, because impressed people wanted to be acknowledged for their otherwise defunct purposes.

He’d learnt early on in his childhood time was one of those things which impressed a lot of people—layman people especially, which was helpful when, as a kid, he’d sometimes relied on someone taking either pity (which he hated, but hey; it got him dinner) or interest.

Tony Stark had been one of the ones to take an interest in him, in his stupid potato gun, in his intelligence and quick-wit. He’d been less impressed with Harley’s apparent inability to hide those things, to use them sparingly instead of all the time: Tony taught him there were times when it was better to use politeness and to play to the emotion of the moment. Tony taught him if everyone was sad, being a smartass probably wasn’t the best idea.

Tony Stark was the first (and only) person to sit down with him, in the lab, and say, “Kid, today, it’s time to construct your first mask.” The billionaire had been instrumental in helping Harley adapt to situations, to break down the uncomplicated expressions of people into descriptions. He’d groomed Harley into being the guard dog of every situation.

Unfortunately, he’d obviously forgotten even the most tame of mutts are still animals at heart.

And now it seemed Tony Stark’s interest, and all the impressiveness with which Harley cloaked himself in, had been undressed – had waned and gone on to other things. Like Peter, and repairing his fractured relationships with the Avengers. Harley didn’t understand Tony’s attempts to do that: all they did was use him for his ideas, for his Tower, for his money. What was that old adage? Insight may cause blindness?

Harley slept in quarrelling bouts as his head rang with abandoned lyrics and fraught memories laden with moments of advice. He tossed himself back and forth across the bed—shedding rotten skin—as the morphine shot drained out of him and he was finally, finally, woken up.

He hadn’t expected an empty room by any means, but for Doctor Strange to be there? Harley inwardly cursed himself for not figuring out the Master of the Mystic Arts would visit him after the trials and tribulations he’d gone through. The doctor was standing at his side, one of his hands – not shaking; imbued with magic – holding carefully Harley’s pulse, which was wrapped up in bandages and drenched in enough disinfectant to drown a rat.

The doctor blinked at him in the near dark as the shining portal behind him cast shadows of gold across the hospital room and his skin. He took his hand away a moment later, sending a long stare into Harley’s matte eyes.

“You’ll have to do without that,” said Doctor Strange, gesturing to the morphine. “With a dotted history such as yours... it’ll do you no good. It would be like leaving open bottles around Tony’s living room: there’s too much temptation.” Fumbling over the attachment in Harley’s arm, Doctor Strange pulled out the needle and dropped it to the floor. “You don’t need it though, do you?” he asked a second later, quiet.

Harley breathed calmly into the tense air of the room surrounding them, not giving an audible answer. _Of course I don’t need it_.

“You’re not feeling any notable pain, are you?” Doctor Strange’s voice strummed with baiting softness. One of his hands, starting to shake as he withdrew his magic, touched Harley’s forehead. “You’re past it, aren’t you, Harley?”

A tear budded in Harley’s eye, some forsaken attempt at playing human, but he gave a nod all the same. He didn’t feel he could lie to the Master of the Mystic Arts right now, not when they were sharing the pride of men damaged beyond repair. Tony should be here, too; he was just as bad as they were, and Peter was coming up fast: he’d soon learn what it felt like—what it felt like to feel nothing.

Harley’s unhinged jaw twitched at the edges of his mouth into an unbidden smile.

“Do yourself a favour, Harley,” said Doctor Strange, soft and near his bandaged ear. “What no one else can do.”

Harley’s throat, ripped and raw, started to thrum with peppering laughter and he stretched out a hand to take Doctor Strange around the wrist, tighten as much as he could, bid the other man to stay with him, to say the word as his head jolted against the pillow.

 _Yes, do yourself a favour_ , said the voice so much like his own in his head, as _Icarus_ started up in the background of his memories as a low, gentle expanse of sound. Harley turned his head, exposed the angry red of his neck turning a glorying, metallic grey. _Do yourself a favour_. He was gold-plated in his certainty, then, despite Doctor Strange’s hovering presence.

“Die,” said Doctor Strange, the word alien on his tongue. It was not what a doctor should ask of his patients; he’d taken a vow, after all. “Do yourself a favour, Harley.”

 _Die_.

 _Die, huh? There’s no fun in that; that doesn’t impress people. There’re millions dying—statistics_.

Harley’s torn mouth slid into a smile and Doctor Strange retreated to his portal. Mutual understanding passed between them: this conversation would not leave this room. The doctor would keep his vow outside of this room. This room was the all and nothing between them.

Harley settled back against his bed and breathed; his lungs had soothed hours ago, and the rattling sensation in his head had dulled to a gentle thrum. _I don’t think I will_ , thought Harley in regards to dying, watching as the portal closed behind the Master, scattering droplets of rainwater across the floor.

\+ _Three days later_.

“Can I have my phone back?” Harley asked, as he stretched his back in a neat curl.

“I don’t know,” said Bucky as he tapped his own phone repeatedly, sitting on the edge of Harley’s bed. It was no longer in the medical quarter, instead having been wheeled into the team quarters where Harley could be around the others to take part in conversation and participate in games now his hands – or, rather, his right hand – had, miraculously, healed almost entirely.

The nerves were shot in his left hand; they were unstrung and undone, causing it to tremble uncontrollably. Doctor Cho said she was working on something, looking into the capabilities of the Cradle, but Harley had so far settled for the pins and, though it shook worse than Doctor Strange’s hands ever had (apparently), Harley didn’t mind that he could barely move more than just his pinkie voluntarily: that’s what physical therapy was for after all.

He’d need a lot of that, apparently.

(He didn’t personally think so.)

“I can’t believe what they did to you,” said Sam from where he was sitting at the table, looking at his own device with little interest. “ _Steam_. God. I can’t imagine the pain...”

“It was bad,” Harley replied, managing a wince. He’d actually almost forgotten the sensation of it curling over his flesh now, despite the third degree burns all over his body. “It hurt over the injection pricks most of all—like it was seeping through them and straight into my skin...”

“How can Cho still not know what they put in you?” Bucky asked, voice careful and without more than an ounce of unnerved emotion. His whole face read as constant confusion. “How can there be no traces?”

Harley hadn’t thought about it much. He had something of an idea, especially when he looked at the thin strings of grey splitting through his unevenly-coloured skin, but without testing he couldn’t be sure.  
He resisted the urge to bite his lip—which he’d been doing a lot since his last operation, since resetting his jaw and since... Well, since the healing factor kicked in.

Cho hadn’t disclosed that yet; not to the Avengers, anyway; not that they couldn’t see it. Tony knew the ins and outs – because of course he did. Harley wasn’t blind to Tony’s intentions, to his attempts to keep Harley secure and controlled from a distance. He had to know he’d messed up, and this was his way of doing damage control: by keeping everyone else in the dark, by handling it himself, by imagining Harley was still the same as he’d been for years: a tethered guard dog, a leashed mutt.

He was buying Cho’s loyalty to him and his whims now, trying to place her into one of his neat little piles, trying to configure her movements and code her actions with everyone else. A machine, as Harley had been. Harley nearly wanted to laugh, except he couldn’t because laughing was not a thing someone did when the pain was so great – had been so great – a lot of people could wonder exactly how and _why_ he was alive.

 _Do yourself a favour, Harley. Die_.

+ _Four days later. One week since Harley’s return._

It was no coincidence when Steve suddenly had to go to Wakanda. It was no coincidence when T’Challa and his smart-alecky sister turned up barely six hours later with the Captain trailing them.

Shuri set up in Tony’s lab and Harley, astounding most of the gathered Avengers, walked there in sweats. They draped uncomfortably over his lean body. Although he could definitely do with some more muscle, the wastage wasn’t as pronounced as it had been.

She hooked him up to something – a small machine – and took skin cell samples without saying more than a hello. Shuri was kind and interest came easily to her, but the way she looked at Harley was with something which made him tingle when he worked out what it was: fascination.

After all, there were a lot of questions—questions he couldn’t hope to answer.

That’s where Wanda Maximoff came in.

The Scarlet Witch was just as kind as the Princess. Harley didn’t speak, but nodded at her when she asked if she was allowed to examine his head. When she began, he was drawn into it, the pulsing of her energy, and saw through her eyes—saw the raw consciousness he was, saw the blocked off pathways of his mind, watched as she drew back, pulled away, and he blinked into the real world with fragile insistence for her to try again, that he would relax a little more, that it was new to him and he just needed a moment.

He did not explain it was a paradox, that she had seen both too much and too little. It was irony; he knew his head, his mind very well, and yet that glimpse hadn’t been enough. He wanted to see more of himself, of who he was beyond everything he was aware of. Harley wanted to know exactly what he was capable of.

“No,” she replied after catching her breath, her Americanised accent falling away; the Eastern European edge to it clicking back strongly as she took a stand back. “I-I saw enough. He...” She looked at Steve, standing nearby, waiting, his eyes trailing from Harley to Wanda. “He doesn’t know a thing about them.”

“OK,” said T’Challa. “Does he know why and how they were injecting him with _liquid vibranium_? Where they got it? Absolutely anything?” Wanda shook his head. T’Challa’s dark eyes trailed across Harley’s face, and then he turned to Cho. “I do not know what could become of him.”

“He seems stable enough, brother,” said Shuri, her hand fleeting from Harley’s hand to his head—taking another skin cell from one of the thicker grey lines. “I have never seen anything like this myself. It’s _astounding_... If you’d just let me study him back at my lab...”

“No,” said Steve, crossing his arms. He walked steadfast across the bleak lab, pushing past Wanda to arrive at Harley’s side. His fingers curled over Harley’s wrist. “He’s still recovering.”

Harley looked from Shuri’s excitement to Steve’s worry. His eyes clouded over in sudden and unprovoked grief, seeing the sure pain settling in Steve’s eyes. A few moments of silence cleared the air around them, and then Bucky arrived – he stood in the doorway momentarily, and then moved through and towards the bed Harley was in. He placed his flesh hand on Shuri’s shoulder and squeezed it in greeting, but quickly put his attention on Harley.

“Hey,” he said, and the room cleared around them, people turning to examine equipment and sheets of paper. Bucky’s arm – his vibranium arm – settled over Harley’s nerve-shattered left hand and held it, carefully, gently—like a father would; should, at least. “You all right, kid?”

“Getting there.”

Bucky laughed. “You remind me of Steve – before he was all this.” Bucky gestured at Steve’s broad and unrelenting form. “All snarky, getting himself beat up every other Saturday tryna impress a girl way out of his league.” He smiled, eyebrows raised as he looked from Steve to Harley.

Harley, suddenly, wanted to laugh—he sort of sniggered as he sat up in the bed and worked the cramp from one leg. When had the Winter Soldier—the White Wolf—gotten so domestic? When had he mellowed into this? Harley dragged his mouth into a smile, something sort of gentle and nothing like the sharp ones he was used to giving.

Steve dropped his arms, walked forwards, and enveloped him in a hug. Harley pressed back—heard the huff of his breath as Harley squeezed; he’d finally met his match for strength, it seemed, despite the starvation still present in Harley’s features.

Harley did not see the worried glance pass between Steve and Bucky, Wanda and T’Challa.

“This is nice,” Harley said, quietly, into Steve’s shoulder. Bucky’s vibranium hand settled on his shoulder, squeezed, and Harley repeated, “This is nice.”

+

Harley’s favourite bible story was Judas: Judas Iscariot and his thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus, the Son of God.

( _If you can make God bleed—_ )

It had fascinated him, despite his chains to his faith long-since rusting away before they’d ever taken a proper hold. The betrayal, the Field of Blood, how there’d seemingly been no motivation. Harley offered none either. Judas was a central character to the bible, really; he’d set in motion a whole chain of events— _the_ whole chain of events. Judas was one of the main reasons salvation was brought to humanity, and that deliverance inspired rapt attention in Harley: how could a single man be responsible for the fall of another and yet, in that process, be the reason behind the rescue of so many people. Thrilling.

Harley didn’t think himself so lucky. He’d have to write his own deliverance should he want saving.

+ _Later_.

The first thing he did when he got his phone back was turn on his music. He drifted from the room when no one was looking and settled on the balcony overlooking the forest. Beneath him, Clint and Cooper were playing a game of baseball. As he settled the headphones over his ears, Harley watched them—watched the relationship between father and son.

As _I’m So Sorry_ played through his ears, Harley thought of his father.

He didn’t quite expect Steve’s face to emerge in his thoughts—nor did he expect Bucky to appear at his side in reality, to be leaning on the balcony, looking between the forest and Harley. Harley moved one side of his headphones away so he could hear the other man speak: “I can’t believe... this,” said Bucky, gesturing at him. “How well you are.” He leant onto his elbow, smiled. “We thought you were going to die.”

 _Do yourself a favour, Harley. Die_.

“So did I,” Harley replied, forcing a reasonable smile. It dipped, and Bucky was perceptive—his eyes narrowed just, his smile dropped entirely and he stared closely at Harley. Harley catalogued it, that look, reminded himself not to unravel in front of the Winter Soldier again.

+ _A day later_.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, sister?” asked T’Challa, his fingers clasped and settled over his lean stomach.

“Yes, brother,” Shuri replied, finger poised over her tablet. “Although this was borne from horror, just think of the progress Harley has shown; think of what our vibranium can really do.”

T’Challa’s eyes slid across to her, and he bowed his head. “Sister, I...” He raised a hand, scratched his chin. “Do you not think there is... something wrong? When Mr. Rogers came to us...”

“Brother, understand this,” said Shuri, carefully, as she readied to take notes, her eyes cast upwards at the recently-constructed tower. Beneath it, a couple of soft mats had been laid. “What you are seeing in Harley is not unusual—this is not recent programming. This is what happened to him – this is the environmental factors of his torn youth, and this is how it is now manifesting. This is...”

“Not progress,” T’Challa bit out, moving his hands to clench the sides of his chair. “This man is ill, and yet all you are concerned about is pro-”

“Brother.” Shuri raised her hand. “I understand more than you think I do. I know what Harley is, and I think he does too...” She watched the young man atop the tower, approaching his plank to walk. “But, brother, understand this: would you rather he was on our side, or against us?”

T’Challa was quiet, too quiet. Before he had a chance to say anything, Harley threw himself off of the tower and plunged down to the earth. The shockwave of his landing pulsed through the room, Harley’s fist shattering the sprung floor as he landed in that all-too-familiar pose with unwavering grace and power. The mats had split where he’d landed and been cast across the room. A moment later he stood up – right as rain. His face slumped into a smug smile, and he waved off Helen Cho’s concern with frightening ease.

T’Challa clicked his tongue, “ _How can we be sure what side he is on, sister?_ ” He looked at her, saw her typing quickly on her tablet. “ _I thought we were past being on sides, now_.”

“Oh, brother,” Shuri laughed, before replying in their shared language. “ _There are always sides_.”

+ _Later_.

Harley settled on the couch between Steve and Bucky. He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but it had scared him – today – the jump; the fall. For a moment he’d felt himself going, slipping through the bonds between Heaven and Hell and wondering where exactly a creature such as him would belong.

And then, suddenly, he’d known – in a matter of seconds – one such as him could belong nowhere else but on Earth.

It was in the back of his mind to wonder whether he could change – whether he could forgive Tony Stark for this abandonment and for all his attempts at keeping Harley in containment... But there was a subtle voice in his head, the one like his own but different, quiet and alluring and it said he should wait and see, wait and see.

 _Come and see, come and see_.

He shivered.

Harley curled his hand around Steve’s wrist and the Captain looked away from the television where a reporter was mentioning a high-profile court case. “What happened while I was... away?” asked Harley, his voice reflecting the unsure nature of his thought process. “What happened to Peter? And Tony? Why isn’t... Why hasn’t he been here?”

“Because he’s got more important things to do, apparently,” said Steve, bitter.

“Steve,” Natasha warned, sightless eyes on him.

This felt like vintage misery to Harley, looking from her to Steve. “No, I understand he’s... I understand he doesn’t – he doesn’t care about me _like that_. Like he cares about Peter, I mean.”

“... You do?” asked Bucky, careful, his hand folding over Harley’s shoulder.

“Yeah. I... I get he’s not...” Harley dipped his head, something as close to sadness as he got rushing through his overactive thoughts. He slumped into the couch. “I don’t think of him like that anymore.”

“Oh,” said Steve, and someone turned the television down. “I-”

“When are we going back to New York?” asked Harley, looking from Steve to Bucky and back again. “I don’t want to stay here. I want- I want to see Peter, actually. I miss him.”

“Well,” Bucky started. “School-”

Harley snorted. “I’m not going back to MIT,” he said bluntly, locking down that conversation. “I know what I need to know and, and—there’s no time.” He avoided anyone’s eyes, looking across to the window.

 _Do yourself a favour, Harley—Come and see_.

+

_Come and see_.

 _Judas_...

 _Come and see_.

+ _That night_.

Harley woke up screaming for the first time since he was three.

Steve was there in an instant and Bucky arrived a moment later; they were both still dressed, exhaustion playing through their eyes. “God,” Bucky said when he thought Harley couldn’t hear him. “How did this happen, Steve? How did _you_ become a parent?”

“Speak for yourself, Buck” said Steve, one arm wrapped around Harley’s shoulder to draw the boy into him, against him, head to shoulder, chin to head. “Hey, Harley – calm down, son. Calm down.”

Through his pricking tears – his emotions running wild – Harley gripped Steve’s shirt and muttered, “Dad.” Why? Why now? What was this? What was happening? He hadn’t felt like this since before constructing his first mask, since before he learnt how he was meant to behave—and yet here he was. “I’m scared,” he said, his arms shaking. “I’m – I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Dad. Dad, I’m scared.”

Steve and Bucky shared a look over Harley’s shoulder—or, at least, by the tilting of Steve’s head that’s what it felt like. That’s what he thought they were doing. “Oh, Harley,” said Steve, rubbing his back carefully – so aware, _too_ aware of the mutilations, of the faded scars, of the inhuman side of Harley now; the vibranium fixing him together. “You say that like it’s your first time feeling it.”

In a small, tentative voice – as Harley raised his head to look at Steve – he said, “I... It is.”

 _COME AND SEE_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No bonus, just a very drawn-out explanation.  
> As you might have noticed, the chapter count just went up by one. This is because I decided to split this chapter into two as I felt, while writing it, it wouldn't be doing justice to _The World Was Wide Enough_ or to _Playlist_ to open that Pandora's Box yet as we're still a few chapters off of total understanding in the main plotline and it felt premature.  
> Saying that, I'm hoping to get the next chapter of TWWWE up soon-ish. I've been fantastically unhappy with it lately, as I'm worried the buildup is both too much and not enough, if you get my understanding? It's difficult balancing the certain with the uncertain, and I'm worried my wonderful readers - that's you - will get bored of waiting for the ' _big thing_ ' that's meant to happen while the world's getting built up a little more to introduce characters who haven't (yet) shown their face in the MCU and to continue developing characters and relationships already present, while dropping enough hints and clues as to where the plot is going to sustain interest without revealing everything in one paragraph.  
> I'm basically trying to write a movie and it's tiring because I want you guys to enjoy it.  
> And that's why this chapter has been split. Stay safe -J


	4. Gold Plated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > “I am The Watcher,” said the giant man, voice cutting through the rain as if they were having a conversation on a deserted street. He spoke like he was reading from a well-rehearsed script. “And I appear to record moments of great change and enormous upheaval.”
>> 
>> _Well, shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here it is! The concluding of Harley's Playlist!
> 
> Thank you for all your input and for sticking with me, despite the odd narrative and out-of-shape pacing order at times. I've loved working on Harley's Playlist, and I hope you have enjoyed the different perspective on the same happenings. His story, of course, continues in The World Was Wide Enough.  
> Enjoy this last chapter, which corresponds directly with chapter 7 of TWWWE, and all it's about to go into, friends (See my end note for more info on that) –J

###### 

+ _The next morning: Saturday_.

Harley didn’t sleep well. Scratch that: Harley didn’t sleep.

He stayed up contemplating the window and its slack opening, and then pulled himself back from the edge when it looked too exciting and tempting. He got up the next morning and had breakfast without mentioning a word of how he’d slept; instead he listened to the dull conversation and the etching of something in his head, the quiet expanse of noise as it stuttered and sounded like silted breathing. He—

“Captain,” FRIDAY said suddenly, breaking through the casual conversations happening around the table. “Peter is at the front gate. He is requesting entrance.”

Steve looked up, confusion playing over his features. “He has full clearance, FRIDAY.”

“He has an unknown male with him.”

“Unknown? Pull up the feed,” said Sam, having finished his modest breakfast. His hand tapped across the table idly, phone cast to one side in annoyance about some sports game which had just gotten postponed.

A hologram drew up in front of them suddenly, displaying a modern Rolls Royce with suicide doors. Harley faltered at the sight: The Stark family did not use Rolls Royce cars. Peter had stepped out of the front-passenger side and wandered up to the camera. No sound was audible, but Harley’s layman ability to read lips confirmed Peter was saying, “Stay in the car, Harry.”

Harley didn’t know a _Harry_. He pressed his shoulders down and blanked his sleepless face, running a hand over his eyes to clear them of gunk as he waited for Steve or Sam or Bucky to patch in the comms. It took a second, as Steve asked FRIDAY to rotate the camera but Peter wasn’t oblivious: he moved with it, his smile straining.

Finally, Steve gave in and opened them, “Audio, FRIDAY... Hey, Peter. Is Tony with you?”

“ _Steve! Uh, Mr. Rogers, I mean—uh, I mean—I mean... Is-is Harley OK?_ ”

There was no camera on the other side, thankfully. Steve cast Harley a glance, nodding at the hologram. Harley slowly learnt forwards and said in a voice strained of emotion, “Hi, Peter.”

“ _Harley! Oh, my God! Than-thank goodness! How are you? Tony hasn’t – Tony’s not told me anything, and Doctor Strange is acting really weird but I know he’s seen you and finally I managed to get up here with Harry’s help and, and oh my God I- I just... Harley! You’re OK!_ ”

Harley’s lip quirked, but he felt hollow inside (pardon the cliché; it’s there for a reason, right?). “Define ‘OK’, Peter,” he said, trying to sound something like the Harley Keener Peter knew, but it was hard: he wasn’t that Harley anymore. He couldn’t be. “Is... Tony with you?”

“ _Tony? No, Dad is... He’s in New York_.”

“Does he know you’re here, Peter?” asked Rhodey, side-eyeing Sam and Wanda. Shuri blinked with causal intrigue.

“ _Uh..._ ” Peter skirted his eyes to the left. “ _Uh... Funny question – uh. Well. It’s Saturday, and... He doesn’t know—but that’s why Harry’s here! He drove me._ ” He gestured at the car, putting on a smile. “ _Ple-please, Uncle Rhodey, please don’t... Don’t tell him—don’t tell dad_.”

“I’m not,” Rhodey replied as he got his phone out and placed it, carefully, on the table. He flicked through his contacts and rested the screen openly on his chat-log with Tony. “Who’s Harry?”

“ _He’s a..._ ” Peter faltered, “ _A friend_.” His voiced edged at the word, and he visibly swallowed around the lump in his throat.

Steve looked up from where he’d directed his eyes to the table. “We don’t work like that anymore, Peter. Who’s Harry?”

Peter strained his mouth into a wider frown. “ _He’s my friend – who is helping me... To get here because, because otherwise I couldn’t get here—Tony disallowed me from using the cars, so..._ ” He fidgeted, glanced behind him. The car honked. Peter waved, but returned his attention to the camera a second later. “ _Please. I just want to see Harley..._ ”

“Pete.” Rhodey kept his voice level as his fingers tapped across his screen. “We can’t let just anyone in. Who is Harry?”

Harley chanced a glance and saw ‘ _Peter’s at the Compound_ ’ written into the box, but it hadn’t yet been sent. Harley could already see where this was going. Reaching across to tug Bucky’s arm, he said, “What if I went out to meet Peter?”

Bucky gave him a long look. He turned to Steve, tapped him on the arm. “What if Harley went out to meet Peter?”

“That could work,” Steve replied immediately, apparently already on the way to the suggestion. He silenced their audio output. “But not alone. I’ll come with you. Rhodey – keep an eye on Peter, all right? And try to see who’s in the car.” He rose from his seat at the head of the table and gestured for Harley to come with him. Patting him on the arm, Steve said, “You give the word and we’ll come straight back in, OK?”

“Sure,” Harley replied as they walked quickly down the staircase and towards the front doors. It was no more than a five minute jog down to the gate.

“Sam, open the gates just enough for us to squeeze through, thanks,” Steve said into their open comms, and Harley just about heard Sam give a quick affirmative before the gates slid open. Steve quickly pushed Harley through them and then towards the side where Peter was still at the camera, tapping it.

Suddenly, a car door opened and an unfamiliar voice called out, “Pete! Hey, Pete! Is this your friend with – holy shit! You’re Captain America! Sir.” The guy in the car stepped out and stood up quickly, hand immediately going up in salute.

Steve automatically saluted back. “At ease,” he offered in a gruffer than normal voice. The guy slumped into his good clothes, the straight of his back flexing in a lean curl. “Who are you?” Steve demanded then, as Peter finally turned around and exclaimed:

“Harley!”

Harley opened his arms just in time as Peter shot into them—and for the first time in over half a year Harley was seeing him: was staring at the sharp jut of his jaw which had only gone more pronounced, and the squaring of his shoulders from months of hard training in the summer. His curls had evened out into soft waves, but his eyes had remained as they were, if perhaps darkened a little; collected sleep and memories with age. His hands had roughened up, the palms and joints especially.

Awkwardly trying to work out where to place his arms, Harley moved his head to Peter’s shoulder and set his chin there, breathing in the once-familiar intoxication of motor fuel and machines clinging to Peter’s modest clothes. “Peter,” Harley said, quietly, before pulling away. “It’s nice to see you.”

“It’s been months!” Peter breathed, shaking his head. “I-I, I’m so sorry, Harley!”

Harley nodded, but did not accept nor deny the apology. “It has been,” he said instead, turning his attention on the Captain and Harry. “Who is he? Just between us?” Harley dropped his voice.

“Harry Osborn,” replied Peter immediately – always too trusting, he was, but Harley had no reason (currently) to use any information against him. Peter was safe, after all. “We met at a fundraiser a few months ago and we go to the same college, too.”

“Norman Osborn’s son,” Harley catalogued, his stomach churning. “Can you trust him? Should you trust him? After what...”

Peter started shaking his head; unconsciously or not, Harley knew there was definitely something there. Peter wanted to like Harry Osborn, that was obvious; but he didn’t seem to trust him very much. “Not important,” said Peter, gesturing the conversation away. “What’s important is you, Harley. Are you OK? What happened? What did... What did they do? I mean, you’re up—of course you’re up; you’re Harley Keener. Nothing keeps you down for long—remember when you had the flu? I remember-”

“Peter.” Harley motioned at him, and moved to place a hand heavily on his shoulder; grounding, maybe slightly too possessive. He didn’t ease off. “What’s wrong?”

“... Nothing’s wrong,” said Peter, looking away. “It’s just—... No one will tell me anything. Dad locks himself in his lab with Doctor Strange and doesn’t let me in there anymore—I mean, I got in and I heard them talking about you and this _thing_ , but Ton—Dad found out and he _grounded_ me, Harley. I’m eighteen, not _eight_ , for God’s sake.”

Harley patted his arms, his shoulders—he restrained the majority of the physical touch, though, the warmth of his palms pushing through the gradual chill settled in his upper body. _That’s not right; Peter can’t thermo-regulate... Why is he cold? Why haven’t they had the heating on? It’s cold enough for a proper sweater at least_. “What were they saying?”

“That something’s going to happen—something’s coming,” said Peter, his eyes flicking across to where Harry was being instructed to get back into the car.

Harley noticed, too, and saw the dark look cross Steve’s eyes as he turned towards Harley and Peter. He knew that look; knew they had to leave, that they weren’t welcome and that, presumably, Peter was about to get grounded again if Harley read his lips right. “Peter,” said Harley, hugging him again, pressing fragile warmth into the strong, wiry body. “What’s coming? Did you hear?”

“Judas,” said Peter, biting his lower lip. “An-and he said—he said there’s something wrong... That he needs...” He shut up suddenly, looking from Harley to Steve. “Hi, Mr. Rogers.”

 _Saved by the bell_ , thought Harley dismissively, unsure of Peter getting into this—into him. He turned to the Captain.

“Peter,” said Steve, his voice pulled back. “You’re going to have to leave now, I’m sorry. Your _friend_ over there won’t tell me who he is, and that’s a no-go right now, son.”

Peter clenched his jaw, looking from Steve to Harley’s face. He gave his standard nod of understanding, and then turned to Harley again. “I’m glad you’re OK... Tony does care, y’know. He’s just—this thing....”

“Peter,” said Steve, putting a hand on Harley’s shoulder to guide him back. “If Tony cared, he would be here right now. He wouldn’t have left when Harley arrived, when we didn’t even know if Harley would make it—it’s fine that he’s putting you first, Peter, but Harley didn’t deserve to be left out in the cold.”

“Bu—but, Mr. Rogers – if I might say...” Peter lowered his eyes, uncertain. “You don’t... You don’t know what you’re talking about—Dad, he’s—Dad’s—Something’s coming. Something’s happening – the world’s in danger, Mr. Rogers, and Tony’s doing everything he can to save it.” The rift in the air was clear as the line of Peter’s mouth hardened. He added bitterly, “Again.”

Steve set his jaw. “Well, Tony’s welcome to come to us for help.” God. What a liar. He widened his stance, gestured at the car, and this time Peter went willingly.

He got into the passenger seat and rolled down the window. “Harley,” Peter called. “I hope you’ll come back to the Tower soon—I hope you all will, Mr. Rogers.”

“Peter,” said Steve, butting in as Harley was about to reply his well wishes and his empty promises. Though, that was probably for the best. “Can you take a message back to your father, please?”

“Sure, Mr. Rogers.” Peter’s face lit up, a glint of delicate hope in his eye.

Steve walked forwards and leant into the car. In the eerie silence he commanded, Harley heard the words spat perfectly:

“Fuck off.”

 _Language_ , thought Harley with disregarded humour, as Harry Osborn started up the car, automatically rolled up Peter’s window from his side and they were off without another word. Through the back window, Harley saw Peter collapse into elevated tears and watched Harry reach over—hand on Peter’s thigh, (probably) gentle and yet possessive, too close and too much, too dangerous.

Harley didn’t blame him for wanting answers. Harley wanted them, too.

The only difference between them was Harley was actually going to get the answers.

###### 

+ _Later; at night_.

 _Come and see, Judas. Come and see_...

 _Come and see, Judas; come and see the false prophet_.

Harley opened his eyes into the darkness of his bedroom and sat up, the voice he’d heard for days on-end finally drifting from his consciousness—replacing the empty static he’d been beset with with the gentle thrum of his earphones falling awkwardly on to his pillow. From them, a turned-down version of _Imagine Dragon’s The Last of the Real Ones_ was playing with the others on loop.

Reaching across to his bedside table, Harley quietened his phone. He stared at the digital clock, squinting against the brightness of the screen, and gave a gentle nod at seeing it was only 1AM. He’d gone to bed much earlier than he’d wanted, tired from his emotional interaction with Peter and learning he was obviously not the only one with visions and voices of Judas anymore.

Yet, suddenly, he felt unburdened – as if he’d been shouldering something not his to shoulder. He pulled his legs around and carefully stood up, wobbling through his bedroom to manually turn on the overhead light—he hated that light; he’d preferred the subway lights he had in the Tower and in his room off-campus at MIT. Something told him he wouldn’t have to worry about it soon, though.

He got dressed in a hurry and approached his desk, rifling through a drawer but coming up empty of any notepaper. Harley discarded the thought, then, of leaving anything about where he’d gone. He was struck, seemingly from his subconscious, of the idea that soon they would follow him anyway.

Harley paused as he turned the doorknob just so and stepped out into the dark hallways. “FRIDAY,” he called.

The AI, plagued with simulated interest, replied quietly. “Good evening, Harley. What are you doing up? Shall I inform the Captain?”

“Is he awake?” asked Harley, his face dropping into a frown.

A few moments passed, and then FRIDAY replied, “He’s currently in his quarters. He’s studying.”

“Oh.” Harley raised his eyebrows. “That’s nice. Uh, no – No, FRIDAY, please don’t inform him that I’m awake... Wait, if I leave the Compound building, will you tell him?”

“There’s no current protocol dictating me to. However, if your safety was compromised I would have to tell him.”

Harley looked up at the ceiling, at the small blue light informing him the AI’s camera was centred on him directly. He stretched his lips into a thin smile and said, “I just need some air.”

“I should warn you it’s currently raining outside.”

“Thanks, FRIDAY.” Harley retrieved a coat, though it wouldn’t help him very much at all. Walking quietly down the hallway, past Wanda’s bedroom and Sam’s bedroom and the guest room where T’Challa and Shuri were, Harley took the stairs to the upper deck and then down to the lower main floor. “Anyone ahead, FRIDAY?”

“There is currently no one on the main floor, Harley.”

“Great.” Harley quickened his steps, his stare flirting with the blue glints of the AI’s cameras, and arrived at the front door. It opened easily under his touch—and so it should, him being oh-so important. He stepped outside, the chill of Fall in the air along with the heavy smell of the rain, and continued walking until he got to the edge of the overhang. A few stray droplets managed to hit his face, but he otherwise remained relatively dry. “FRIDAY?” he called. “How far is your reach?”

When he received no response, Harley preened his hair back and went to take a step—but that was when FRIDAY decided to speak: “Harley, I am detecting foreign energy signals and pulses in the surrounding area. I would advise you to return to the Compound.”

“Yeah, I, I..., I’m gonna ignore that,” Harley replied, staring out into the rain. A sudden flash of something in the distance propelled him to step backwards—even though he knew, in his busted heart, if there was anything out there it could definitely see him. He swallowed as the once unfamiliar but now constantly-present feeling of fear pushed through him and he asked, “Is it Thor?”

“No.”

“Uh—uh... What’s her face, uh...? Captain Marvel?”

“No, Harley. I do not know wha-” Suddenly, FRIDAY’s speech turned into static.

Harley’s heart leapt into his throat. Through the pouring rain, humdrum thunder rolled over the land and with it came the same piercing voice Harley had been hearing all day—and here it was, in the real life: “Come and see!” it shouted through the bustle of the weather. “Come and see!” Like a Banshee it shrieked across from the forest and Harley watched as a pulse of light drew suddenly downwards from the sky – like a falling star but bigger and whiter and with structured movement.

“What the fuck,” he bit out, hand immediately going to his phone. Even reinforced with his vibranium, Harley found himself nearly knocked off his feet by the gusting winds around him—the Compound was starting to shake with the force of the weather, too. The emergency warning system started to whir behind the splintering cracks of the triple-glazed windows and Harley turned his head back into the darkness and the whirling light zigzagging through the forest towards him. He clenched his hand around his phone, threw himself against a pillar, and quickly dialled the first number that fell into his hand from his quick dial setting.

_C’mon, Peter. Pick up. Pick up. Pick. Up._

“ _Harley? Harl—Wait, what the hell is that noise—_ ”

“Peter!” Harley screamed into the screen as the (man-made? Alien-made?) hurricane battered the Compound. “Peter! Listen to me! Stra-Strange was right! Something’s happening—something’s happening and it has to do with me and, oh, God, Pete- I- I’m-”

“ _Harley, I can’t hear you—is that music? Is that... Is that_ Imagine Dragons _? Uh, what the hell—_ Bastille _? Harley, I love music—but it’s 1AM and I’m grounded right now. I’m not in the mood._ ”

“What? No? Peter! Peter! Please, hear me! Please!” Harley shouted, ripping his throat raw. “Peter, something’s wrong and I-

“Fuck’s sake! Peter! I-I’m Judas!” Harley screamed, collapsing to his knees.

Just then, another light abruptly appeared at his side. It immediately took the form of a huge and towering man with seemingly sightless eyes set deeply into a dome-shaped head, wearing long and impressive robes over a hidden body. The rain did not dampen him (it?), as if he weren’t even formally present. He did not drop his head as he stared down at Harley with implored and ever-present wisdom.

“Shit,” Harley gasped, dropping his phone screen-down on to the concrete. He opened his mouth to form more words, but none would come as the rain battered down, as the quiet and peace the Compound had known the past week was shattered in a night. Harley turned his head and saw the light getting closer—and now it, too, had taken the form of a man. But while the one beside him was huge and all en-compassing of the universe, this one looked more on-par with your uncommon criminal, your maniac and your villain all rolled into one.

“What—what’s happening?” Harley managed, looking at the sightless man with insight into the matters of man, but he remained above it all, seemingly. “What are _you?_ ” Harley gasped.

“I am The Watcher,” said the giant man, voice cutting through the rain as if they were having a conversation on a deserted street. He spoke like he was reading from a well-rehearsed script. “And I appear to record moments of great change and enormous upheaval.”

 _Well, shit_.

Harley turned his head and saw the light – the man – had paused. His eyes, just as white as the Watcher’s, stared at Harley and only him. Could he have been behind the voice? Behind... everything? Had he turned Harley into whatever he was now? The vibranium? The kidnapping? Was he responsible? “Who is he?” Harley asked the Watcher, but left his eyes staring at the man as if playing a game of red light, green light.

The Watcher made a gentle sighing sound and then said, “Go and see, Judas, if that be you.”

Harley swallowed around the lump in his throat, throwing a momentary glance at the Compound. “Why is no one else here?” he asked, stalling.

Replying earnestly, the Watcher said, “The commotion is currently being hidden from them. Only when you go will it be unveiled.”

“... When I go?” The blood drained out of Harley’s face. This... wasn’t in his best interest at all—going with that crazy man? Who, when Harley took a glance, was grinning widely with a celebrity smile—and this Watcher creature wanted him to _go and see?_

_Come and see!_

A stone dropped into his stomach as he recognised the intent behind those words. This was... This was it. This was his reasoning; his why. This moment was the reason he’d been through the life he had. It had all been leading up to this. What... a disappointment. How impressive was this? How impressive was vanishing – again? Surely, this time there would be boredom—there would be a moment when even Steve thought ‘never mind this’.

“I don’t want to – to go and see,” Harley said, standing his ground as he rose from his knees, and even as he walked out from behind the pillar and saw to his astonishment the man had cut through the rain and made Harley a dry path to him lit by fractured moonlight. “I don’t want—I don’t want to be- to be...” He couldn’t make himself say it, despite his inner traitor, despite his inability to feel any guilt of his blank-slate emotions. “I want to be—I want to be Harley Keener—I don’t want—

“I don’t want to be Judas.” He raised tearful eyes to the sky, the emotion bricking him.

The Watcher did not respond, but Harley hadn’t expected him to. He lifted his eyes from the downpour across to all-seeing sightless creature and then turned, although unwilling, to the glow of white light, to the man with the cosmos dancing between his fingers. Harley took in a breath and suddenly the noise around him faded—as did the world, and then it was only them and the Watcher in a whiteout arena of nothing.

“Harley,” the man(?) spoke, landing on the ground(?). “You have been so hurt, Harley. Please, allow me to take that hurt away – to give you the power to take that hurt, to destroy it, to play cat and mouse with those who’ve wronged you.”

“What?” Harley snorted, narrowing his eyes; the whiteness around him was bright, too bright. Was he tripping? What the hell was this? How had this man – this entity – toyed with the matter and reality of their surroundings? “Why would-”

“Because you want to, really.” The man’s face transformed into something modestly attractive to Harley; his eyes darkened and his skin evened into a gentle tan. His hair brushed itself into wavy brown lengths. “Don’t deny your makeup, Harley. You have a longing to play with the world as it has played with you. Allow me to grant you that, to help you – to take away that infiltrating boredom once and for all.” His mouth widened into the same smile from before. “We would make a wonderful team, you and I.” He opened an arm and some of the whiteness fizzled around him, drawing away into disintegrating particles to show the landscape of a God’s world—or, at least, that was the imprinted thought in Harley’s head.

“I keep my promises,” the man said, hand to his heart, eyes flashing between soulless white and ocean-encompassing blue. “And I wish, Harley Keener, to promise you the world.”

Harley was not an idiot. “What’s in it for you?” A moment later, as if the man sensed he was not done, Harley added, “And who are you?”

“One question is easy, the other proves difficult,” said the man as he shattered another wall of the white-space, giving way to golden sands and loping hillocks of debris. “I am that which is from the beyond. _The Beyonder_... And what I want is to observe and study, to unfold and unravel that which is human—to see and test the potential of the product.”

A smile surpassed Harley’s otherwise ratty temper and his increasingly troubled mindset of the being—of The Beyonder and his pretty words. “And how d’you plan on doing that, huh? A _Battle Royale?_ ”

Another wall was shattered from beneath them and suddenly Harley realised he was floating over the ocean – an ocean, at least. “Wait, where the hell am I?”

“To be human must be to ask a lot of questions,” said The Beyonder, eyeing Harley with casual impatience. “When I was brought here by the _feeling of power_ I did not think I would find so much mediocrity... I thought I would find Gods of your world, and yet all I find is a child with a head full of imperfections—but really, how beautiful that is: your imperfections are a match to my excellence. We should rule over those beneath us, Harley Keener.”

Harley stared at him, more than just idly confused. “And, uh—huh. What if I said... What if I ‘no’ and asked you to put me back on Earth and just, uh, leave?”

“I think that’s unlikely,” said The Beyonder. “Your confusion is, hm, beyond me. I am offering you the world, and I sense a small part of your subconscious is for it—I see into you, as I do all below me, and see you have neither guilt nor remorse nor empathy for the majority of humans. Surely, this makes you a God of your world—to place above the humane ideals of emotion for logic.”

“Didn’t much have a choice,” Harley replied, discomfort settling into his features as the man read him like a book. “Look, this is nice and all—but, really, I’m not supposed to talk to strange men right now so... Bye.” He turned around, facing the whiteness behind him, and started walking.

The Beyonder called out, “But you came and saw.” His voice carried weight, as if he was following—but when Harley turned, the entity was still just standing where he was. “They believe you already, you know, to be capable of great feats of which would see the universe – the multiverse – put into fatal danger. Why should you care whether you prove them right?”

“Don’t care!”

“You care,” said The Beyonder, and something in his voice made Harley falter. “You care _too_ much. You’ve discovered a flaw in your programming; you’ve discovered people you want to protect...” The entity floated past Harley and stood in front of him, a knowing look about his whole persona. “You have been trained out of that which can make you a God, Harley Keener. You bleed.”

Harley pursed his lips. “Everyone has people they want to protect.”

“Not like you,” said The Beyonder, levelling. He clasped his soft-looking hands together. “In reality, you are no more than a trained dog. You love and protect unconditionally those who have conditioned you, but only because of your conditioning do they love you.”

“That’s not true,” Harley replied, voice tiny and quiet in the whiteout around them. “My whole—... My whole premise in life exists in exploitation; I couldn’t give a shit what people think,” he said guardedly; a half-truth. “I-”

“Do you really believe you are what you are because it is what the universe planned for you?” The stranger tilted forwards. “Do you not believe you are worth more than what you were made into? A dog? Do you really believe that is who you are?”

“No! Of course not!” Harley spat, eyeing the dip of The Beyonder’s mouth. “I’m not anyone’s dog, and—” He swallowed, steeling himself. “And I’m certainly not trained.”

The Beyonder drew back. He tipped his head towards the Watcher, who stood and vanished into a dusting all too similar to the Snap. Turning his attention back to Harley, The Beyonder said, “You will do.”

“I will do what?” Harley narrowed his eyes.

“You will continue learning, continue advancing.” The Beyonder floated into the air again as the rest of the whiteout arena dispersed around them and they were above an unspoiled, unpopulated world. “Maybe one day you will hold the cosmos in your palms like I do.” He dipped his head.

Beneath them, the world began to move – or maybe they did. Harley watched in gap-mouthed amazement as the world shifted around him and yet he was still floating, still moving above without a care for the landscape below—a jungle, a desert, an open land of greenery – and the Wild West, to name a few. Finally, they reached an Arena – something resembling a place where the Gods might fight for the safety and sake of all humanity. “What is this?” Harley asked, as his feet touched down on the hard ground.

“This is Battle World,” said the Beyonder, opening his palms, his white eyes shining. “And we’re just about to begin the first round.”

END. ( _continues in The World Was Wide Enough_ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I hope you'll continue reading The World was Wide Enough, which is getting a formal edit/remaster currently with help from a friend of mine; we've decided to give it a total overhaul. Look forward to that.  
> The original Open For All will be getting the same treatment.  
> I've also got a few one/two-shots coming up set in the OFA alt-universe, so please subscribe to the 'Stories that Make Us' series if you enjoyed this--and if there's anything you want to see, to know, or a character's perspective you want to read, let me know.
> 
> Lastly, let me take this moment to pay my respects to Chadwick Boseman.  
> A wonderful actor and human being who has spent his career inspiring others and drawing attention to the inequalities plaguing our so-called modern societies.  
> Always in our hearts. Thank you for giving us joy, humour and a chance to believe in a better future. Rest in peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Stay safe all ! :) -J


End file.
